I 



BIBLE WONDERS. 




BY THE 



REV. RICHARD NEWTON, D.D., 

AUTHOR OF "SAFE COMPASS," BIBLE JEWELS," "GREAT 
PILOT," ETC. 




NEW YORK : 
ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 
5 30 Broadway. 
1870. 

V 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern 
District of New York. 



Rockwell & Churchill, 
Stereotypers and Printers, 
122 Washington St., Boston. 



PREFACE. 



When we look through a good microscope 
at the leaf of a flower, or the whig of a but- 
terfly, or a drop of water from a poud, what 
wonderful things we can see ! And when 
we look through a good telescope at the 
moon or some of the stars, by night, what 
strange and startling things are set before 
us ! Now, suppose that one of our eyes 
was made like a microscope, and the other 
like a telescope ; then, as we went about, 
looking at the things that are near us by 
day, or those far oflf, by night, what marvel- 
lous sights we should be seeing all the time ! 
The world is full of wonders, if we only had 
the eyes to see them. But there are more 
wonders in the Bible, and greater wonders, 
too, than are to be found anywhere else. 

Ill 



IV 



PREFACE. 



There are wonders of wisdom here, and won- 
ders of love, and wonders of power, and 
wonders of goodness that are perfectly sur- 
prising. But we need the help of God to 
enable us to see these wonders. And this 
is just the help David was trying to get 
when he offered the prayer, "Open thou 
mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous 
things out of thy law." Ps. cxix. 18. 

The attempt has been made in this book 
to speak of a few of these wonders, in the 
hope that some who read it may be led to 
study the Bible- with more interest, and try 
with increasing earnestness to find out more 
of the wonderful things contained in it. K 
this result shall be secured in any case, the 
book will not have been written in vain. 

The writer must again acknowledge his 
obligations to the graceful pencil of his dear 
friend, Mr. Augustus G. Heaton, to whose 
artistic skill he is indebted for the illustra- 
tions which adorn this volume. 



CONTENTS. 



I. 

PAGE 

"Thy testimonies are wonderful." — Ps. cxix. 129 . . 7 
II. 

"Thy testimonies are wonderful." — Ps. cxix. 129 . . 39 
III. 

"His name shall be called Wonderful." — Is. ix. 6 . 67 
IV. 

"His name shall be called Wonderful." — Is. ix. 6 . 99 
V. 

" There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets." 

— Dan. ii. 28 129 

VI. 

"I AM THE LIVING BREAD WHICH CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN." 

— John vi. 51 163 

VII. 

" Ye MUST BE BORN AGAIN." — John iii. 7 193 

VIII. 

"Ye MUST BE BORN AGAIN." — John iii. 7 223 

IX. 

"The gold of that land is good." — Gen. ii. 12 . . . 253 
X. 

" Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he 
will give it you." — John xvi.,23 285 



BT THE SAME AUTHOB. 



1. THE BEST THINGS. 

2. THE KING'S HIGHWAY. 

3. THE SAFE COMPASS. 

4. BIBLE BLESSINGS. 

5. THE GREAT PILOT. 

6. BIBLE JEWELS. 

(These six volumes can be had in a neat box, with the title of 
the "Jewel Case.") 

7. RILLS FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF LIFE. 

8. THE GIANTS, AND HOW TO FIGHT THEM. 

9. THE JEWISH TABERNACLE. 



I. 



Psalm cxix. 129. 



Bible Wonders. 



I. 

What is the first word in this text? 
"T/^y." To whom does this refer? To 
God. Suppose, now, we say God's, instead 
of "Thy," and then let ns see how the verse 
will read : " God's testimonies are wonder- 
ful." We see, then, it is something belong- 
ing to God which is wonderful. God's what 
are wonderful? God's testimonies. Testimony 
means something that is said about a par- 
ticular person or thing. For instance : here 
is a prisoner brought into court. His name 
is Charles Morgan. He is to be tried for 
stealing a pair of pantaloons from a clothing 

9 



10 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



store, in Market Street, on the afternoon 
of Saturday, the 28th day of last month. 
Well, here is a witness named John Smith. 
He is brought into court to give his iesti- 
mony ; that is, to tell what he knows about 
this robbery. The judge says to him : — 

"Mr. Smith, did you ever see the pris- 
oner at the bar, — Charles Morgan, — be- 
fore?" 

"Yes, sir." 

" Where did you see him last ? " 

"In such and such a clothing store, in 
Market Street, on the 28th of last month." 

"Please tell the gentlemen of the jury 
what you know of his doings on that occa- 
sion." 

"I went into the store that afternoon," 
says Mr. Smith, " to see about buying a suit 
of clothes. While I was there I saw this 
man, Charles Morgan, looking over a pile of 
pantaloons. Presently, the man who was 
waiting on him was called away for a few mo- 
ments. Then I saw Morgan take a pair of 
pantaloons and slyly slip them under a loose 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 11 

coat he had on. After a while he said he 
believed he wouldn't buy any to-day, and 
walked out of the store. As soon as he was 
gone I told what I had seen, and they ran 
after him and caught him." 

Now that would be John Smith's testi- 
mony. It would be what he said about 
Charles Morgan, and his stealing. 

In the same way God's testimonies mean 
what he says, — what he says about himself, 
and what he says about us. God's testi- 
monies are found in his word, — in the 
Bible. There are ten different words in this 
one hundred nineteenth Psalm used for tiie 
Bible. At one time it is called the word of 
God ; then his law ; then his way, his truths, 
his precepts, his commandment, his judg- 
ments, his statutes, his ordinances, his tes- 
timonies. The meaning of the text then, is, 
that God's word, or the Bible, is a wonder- 
ful book. 

I have thought it would be interesting to 
take up some of the wonders spoken of in 
this blessed book, and talk about them. 



12 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



We have had one course of sermons on 
"Bible Blessings." Those were interesting 
subjects. Our last course was on "Bible 
Jewels." Those were interesting subjects 
too. And now, if we try a course on 
"Bible Wonders," I hope we shall find these 
quite as interesting and profitable as the 
others. 

We will begin by talking about some of 
the wonders belono^ino' to the Bible itself. 
It is a wonderful book. There are two 
kinds of wonders about the Bible. One 
kind is the outside wonders ; the other is the 
inside wondei^ of the Bible. Our first ser- 
mon will be about the outside luonders of (he 
Bible. 

There are thi^ee of these outside wonders 
of which I wish now to speak. 

The first ivonder, about the Bible, is, the 

WAY IN ^VHICH IT AVAS MADE. 

It is wonderful how long a time it took to 
make the Bible. When men make books 
it does not generally take them very long ; 
sometimes it does. Dr. Allibone has been 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 13 

engaged for sixteen years on his great work, 
in two large volumes, called the "Dictionary 
of Authors." An English writer, named 
Gibbon, was twenty years in writing a his- 
tory of " The Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire." Adam Clark spent twenty-six 
years in writing his commentary; Bancroft 
thirty-five years on his history, and Noah 
Webster thirty-six years on his dictionary. 

But what are these to the time that was 
occupied in making the Bible ! We read 
that God was engaged six days in making 
the world. But in making the Bible he was 
engaged ^^ee/z hundred years! Yes, from 
the time when Moses wrote Genesis, the 
first book in the Bible, till St. John wrote 
the Revelations, the last book in the Bible, 
all those long years had passed away. That 
was wonderful. 

And then it is wonderful how many men 
were employed to write the Bible ! There 
were Moses, and Samuel, and David, and 
Solomon, and Ezra, and Isaiah, and all the 
prophets in the Old Testament. And in the 



14 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



New Testament, Matthew, and Mark, and 
Luke, and John, and Paul, and Peter, and 
others. There were more than thirty per- 
sons altogether employed in this work. And 
it is not only the number of wi'iters, but the 
great difference between them, that makes it 
wonderful. Some of them were learned 
men, as Moses and Paul ; and some were 
unlearned, as Andrew and Peter. Some of 
them were kings, as David and Solomon. 
Some were princes, as Daniel. Some were 
shepherds, and some farmers, and some fish- 
ermen, and some tentmakers. And yet 
they all agree in what they write. How 
wonderful this is ! How can we explain it ? 
There is one thing about the Bible that ex- 
plains it. It is this : God did all (he thinJc- 
ing in the Bible, The thoughts in the Bible 
are all God's thoughts. Those thirty men 
only did the wilting. They wrote down 
just what God told them. This is the 
reason why they agree. 

We know that this is so, not only because 
nobody could have found out the things in 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 15 

the Bible unless God had told about them, 
but because the Bible tells us that it was 
made in this way. Thus St. Paul says, 
"All scripture is given by inspiration of 
God." (2 Tim. iii. 16.) And what is in- 
spiration? To inspire means to breathe into. 
Suppose, when you go home from school to- 
morrow, your mother should say, "Come 
here, Johnny, I want to tell you a secret." 
You go up to her. She puts her lips close 
up to your ears, and whispers, "Johnny, 
father says if you are a good boy, till your 
next birthday, he'll buy you a beautiful 
watch." Now, while your mother is whis- 
pering those words to you, she is breathing 
into your ear^ isn't she? Well, that is in- 
spiration. She is inspiring you with the 
thought of that beautiful watch. In this 
way God inspired the men who wrote the 
Bible. God breathed into their minds, or 
whispered into their ears, what they were to 
write. St. Peter tells us, "they spake as 
they were moved by the Holy Ghost. (2 
Pet. i. 21.) ''Moved'' here means told. 



16 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



They said and wrote just what the Holy 
Ghost told them. 

The time it took to make the Bible is won- 
derful. So the many men that helped to 
make it is wonderful. And it is wonderful, 
too, lioio many different parts, or pieces, it is 
made of. In the Old Testament there are 
thirty -nine different books. In the New 
Testament there are twenty-seven. Thirty- 
nine and twenty-seven make how many? 
Sixty-six. The Bible is a book of sixty-six 
different tracts, all bound up together. And 
yet they are not thrown together helter- 
skelter, without any order. No ; but they 
fit into each other exactly. They have a 
beginning, a middle, and an end. The 
Bible is like a beautiful piece of mosaic 
work. Did you ever see a piece of this 
kind of work? It doesn't mean work done 
by Moses. This word, mosaic, comes from 
s a Greek word, which means elegant, or pol- 
ished, work. A mosaic work is a figure, or 
picture, of something made, not by using 
paints of different colors, but by putting 



THY TESTIMONIES AEE WONDERFUL. 17 

together a great many little pieces of stone, 
or glass, of different colors. These works 
are very curious, and look very beautiful. 
The different-colored pieces of stone, or 
glass, all unite together and make the pic- 
ture. And just in the same way the differ- 
ent books, or pieces, out of which the Bible 
is made, all unite together to make one 
beautiful picture of Jesus and his salvation. 

The first wonder about the Bible is the 
way in which it was made. Remember, 
under this wonder, three words : the time^ 
the men^ the pieces. 

The second wonder about the Bible is the 

WAY IN WHICH IT HAS BEEN PERSECUTED. 

There never was any book in the world 
half so good as the Bible ; and yet there 
never was any book that has been half so 
much opposed, and which so many persons 
have tried so hard to destroy. During the 
first three hundred years after Jesus was on 
earth, the Emperors of Rome — the great- 
est rulers in the world — tried all they 
could to destroy the Bible, and to keep 
2 



18 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



people from becoming Christians. They got 
up ten long, dreadful persecutions against 
the Bible, and those who read it. Some of 
those persecutions lasted for ten years at 
a time ; and dm^ing those terrible years all 
the power of the Eoman government was 
employed to destroy the Bible. During one 
of those persecutions, in one single country, 
one hundred and fifty thousand Christians 
were cruelly put to death. Sometimes, 
houses were filled with Christians, piles of 
wood were heaped up round it, and they 
were all burned alive together. Sometimes, 
companies of fifties would be tied together 
with ropes, and then were driven into the 
sea. The Koman emperors had a great 
theatre built, that was large enough to hold 
more than twenty thousand people. It was 
built in the form of a circle, with seats, like 
a gallery, all round, rising to the top of the 
high walls. In the centre of it there was a 
large open space, with high, strong iron 
railing all round. Sometimes, the emperor 
would have a number of Christians put into 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 19 

that big sort of cage, and then would let 
loose upon them fierce, hungry lions and 
tigers to tear them to pieces, and eat them 
alive, while twenty thousand people sat 
round, and looked on, as if it were sport. 
And so Christians, by the thousand, 

Were butchered to make a Roman holiday." 

One day, a Christian man was being led 
to this dreadful death. The soldier, who 
had charge of him, said : — 

" My friend, how easily you can save your 
life ! Why can't you give up reading that 
book, which the emperor has forbidden you 
to read, and then you needn't be food for 
the lions?" 

"I can't give up my Bible," said he, "be- 
cause I am a Christian. Eternal life is in 
that book. And lions, or no lions, I can't 
give up eternal life." 

The Roman emperors tried in every way 
to destroy the Bible. One of them, named 
Diocletian, thought he had done it. He had 
killed so many Christians, with such horrible 



20 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



cruelties, and destroyed so many Bibles, 
that because the lovers of the Bible kept 
quiet for a while, and hid themselves, he 
thought he had made an end of them. He 
was so proud of this that he had a medal 
struck off with this motto on it : " The 
CJiristian religion is destroyed^ and the wor- 
ship of the gods restored.'^ Suppose that 
emperor could come back to earth now, and 
see the Bible going through all the nations 
in the world, and the Christian religion with 
it ; I wonder what he would think about his 
famous medal, and that religion which he 
thought he had destroyed ? 

Then, hundreds of years afterwards, when 
the Eoman Catjiolic Church got possession 
of the city of Eome, the Pope and the priests 
took up the old quarrel against the Bible. 
How strange it is that a church, calling itself 
a Christian church, should want to destroy 
the Bible, and should undertake to persecute 
people, and put them to death for no other 
fault in the world but just reading the Bible ! 
Yet this is what the Eoman Catholic Chm^ch 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 21 

did for hundreds of years in Europe. And 
this is what they ivould do in this country^ if 
they had a chance. 

They had a society called " The Inquisi- 
tion." It was the wickedest and cruelest 
society that ever was. The meaning of 
the name is the inquiring society. And 
what do you suppose was the chief thing 
they wanted to inquire about? Why, 
the names of men and women who had 
Bibles, and read them. The officers of the 
Inquisition would burn all the Bibles they 
could get. Yes, and they would not only 
burn the Bibles^ they would burn people 
who read them, whenever they could find 
them. When they heard of a man who was 
reading the Bible to his family, they would 
come to his house, perhaps at midnight. They 
would take him from his bed and carry him 
away to prison. They would load him with 
chains, and put him in a dungeon. They 
would torture him in tbe cruelest way. 
They vvould tear his fiesh with red-hot pin- 
cers. They would haul him up towards the 



22 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



ceiling by his hands, and kindle a slow fire 
under the soles of his feet. They would 
torture him in these, and other horribly 
cruel ways, to make him give up his Bible, or 
tell the names of the other persons who had 
Bibles. And if he refused to do this they 
would never let him go back to his family, 
but would keep him in prison, and continue 
these tortures till he died. For hundreds 
of years the Pope and the priests of the 
Eomish Church tried all they could to de- 
stroy the Bible. But they couldn't do it, 
because it is God's book, and he wouldn't 
let it be destroyed. 

It is not difficult to understand why the 
bishops and priests of the Eomish Church 
have always been so much opposed to letting 
the people have the Bible to read for them- 
selves. It is simply because there is so 
much in the Bible that is against many of 
their doctrines and practices. 

About three hundred years ago, after 
Martin Luther had translated and printed 
the Bible for the people to read, gi^eat 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 23 

numbers were leaving the Eomish Church 
and becoming Protestants. The Eomish 
bishops were very much alarmed. They 
wrote a letter to the Pope, in which they 
said that the Bible was the cause of all the 
trouble they were having ; and that the only 
way to prevent the people from leaving 
their church was to stop them from reading 
the Bible. They said there were so many 
things in their church that were different 
from what the Bible taught, that if the people 
were allowed to read the Bible nothing could 
prevent them from becoming Protestants. 
This was a strange confession for them to 
make ; but still it was the truth. And here 
is an illustration of it. 

There was an honest Koman Catholic man, 
who knew nothing about the Bible. Some- 
body gave him a Bible. He began to read 
it. After a while he said to his wife, 
"Wife, if this book is true, we are wrong, 
He went on reading the Bible. It showed 
him what a great sinner he was, and he be- 
came alarmed. Then he said, "Wife, if 



24 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



this book is true, we are lost.'' But still he 
continued to read the Bible. There he 
learned to know and love Jesus. He found 
out that there was another and a better way 
of salvation than that which the priests 
taught. And then he said, "Wife, if this 
book is true, we are safe.'' That was a 
blessed discovery for him to make. And 
if the Bible has this effect on those who 
read it, we need not wonder that the Rom- 
ish priests have tried so hard to destroy the 
Bible, and stop their people from reading 
it. 

And even in our own day this persecution 
of the Bible has been kept up in some places. 
In the Island of Madagascar, after the mission- 
aries had established churches, and translated 
the Bible into the language of the island, 
the queen, who was a heathen, drove the 
missionaries away, and tried to destroy the 
Bible, and root out the Christian religion 
from the land. Great numbers of Christians 
were put in prison ; others were killed, and 
others punished, in different ways, to make 



THY TESTIMONIES AEE WONDERFUL. 25 

them give up their Bibles, and become 
heathens again. 

One of the ways in which some of those 
Christians were put to death was very singu- 
lar. In a certain part of the island there is 
a high mountain. At one part of the top of 
this mountain there is a steep precipice. 
The side of the mountain goes straight down, 
like a wall, for several hundred feet. The 
foot of this precipice is made up of huge 
masses of broken, jagged rocks. Numbers 
of the Christians were taken to this place. 
A rope was fastened to their hands. Then, 
one by one, they were lowered over the preci- 
pice. As they hang there an officer of 
the queen comes to them. In one hand he 
has a sharp knife ; in the other the offer of 
life and a pardon. " Will you give up the 
Bible and live?" he asks. 

"Never," says the faithful servant of 
Jesus. Then the keen edge of the knife is 
drawn across that tightly stretched rope, 
and the lover of the Bible is plunged down 
that dreadful chasm, and dashed to pieces on 



26 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



the rocks below. They would give up their 
lives, but they would not give up their 
Bibles. 

The second outside wonder of the Bible 
is the way in which it has been persecuted. 

The third of the outside ivonders of the 
Bible is the way in A^TncH it has been 

PRESERVED. 

After all the efforts that have been made 
to destroy the Bible, the greatest wonder 
about it is that we have a Bible at all. It is 
like the bush that Moses saw at the foot of 
Mount Sinai. That bush kept on burning, 
and yet it was not consumed. Just so the 
Bible has been burning, for hundreds of 
years, in the fires of persecution, yet it has 
never been consumed. 

A good minister — the Rev. Dr. Gum- 
ming — once used an illustration of this 
kind about the wonderful preservation of 
the Bible. Suppose there should come walk- 
ing up the aisle of this church a man who 
had been living for eighteen hundred years, 
— nearly twice as long as Methuselah lived. 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 27 

And suppose we knew of him that he had 
been cast mto the sea many a time, but 
couldn't be drowned. He had been thrown 
to the wild beasts, but they never could 
devour him. He had been made to drink 
deadly poisons, of different kinds ; but they 
never did him any harm. He had been 
bound with strong chains, and locked up in 
prisons and dungeons ; but he always man- 
aged to shake off the chains, and get out of 
the dungeons. He had been often hung till 
his enemies thought him dead ; but when 
they cut him down he sprung to his feet, 
and walked away again, as well as ever. 
Hundreds of times they had burned him at 
the stake, till there seemed to be nothing 
left of him ; but the fires were no sooner 
out than he leaped up from the ashes, as 
well and as strong as he was before. He 
had been shot at, and stabbed, and cut to 
pieces ; but the pieces came together again, 
like little drops of quicksilver ; his wounds 
healed up at once, and he was none the 
worse for all this hacking and cutting. How 



28 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



strange it would seem to look on such a 
man ! Wouldn't it be a great wonder to 
find him alive and well after all that he had 
passed through? It icould be a wonder in- 
deed. Yet this is just the way we should 
feel towards the Bible. This is just the 
way in which the Bible has been treated. 
It has been burned, and drowned, and 
chained, and put in prison, and buried 
alive, and torn to pieces, and yet it has 
never been destroyed ; here it is still, — the 
same pure, precious Bible, the same holy, 
blessed " Book divine " that it was eighteen 
hundred years ago ! 

When the early Christians were perse- 
cuted by the Roman emperors, they went 
and lived in the catacombs. These were a 
sort of city of the dead, — a city made up 
of tombs, — dug out under the ground on 
which Rome was built ; and there the Bible 
was preserved at that time. 

When the Christians were persecuted by 
the Roman Catholics, they went and lived 
among the ice and snow-covered mountains 



THY TESmiONIES ARE WONDEEFUL. 29 

of the Alps, where their enemies could not 
follow them; and there the Bible was pre- 
served then. Oh, if we could only get to- 
gether an account of all the curious ways in 
which God taught his people to preserve 
theeir Bibles, when their enemies were trying 
to destroy them, what an interesting book 
it would make ! Let me show you some of 
the ways in which this was done. 

Before the art of printing was discovered. 
Bibles were very scarce, and very dear. 
Every Bible that was used had to be care- 
fully written out. There were men called 
scribes, in those days, whose business it was 
to do this writing. It used to take one of 
those men about ten months to write out a 
whole Bible. Only think of the great dif- 
ference between those days, and these in 
which we live. Then it took ten months 
to make one Bible, while now the American 
Bible Society makes Bibles at the rate of 
two a minute. And it is doing this all the 
year round. Then, a Bible would cost more 
than three hmidred dollars of our money. 



30 



BIBLE WONDEKS. 



Now, we can get a Bible for ten cents ; and 
in England they sell the New Testament for 
a penny. In the eleventh and twelfth cen- 
turies no Bibles were to be found in the 
churches ; and in a whole congregation, 
perhaps only two or three families would 
be found who had single books of the Bible 
written out. One would have a copy of the 
Psalms ; another of Job ; another of Isaiah ; 
another of the Gospel of St. John, or of the 
Epistle to the Romans, or of the Book of 
the Revelations. These they would be 
afraid to take to church, or to use in public, 
for fear the priests would get them and burn 
them. And so societies of young persons 
were formed, and each member of these 
societies was required to commit to memory 
some book of the Bible. One would com- 
mit to memory the Gospel of St. Matthew ; 
another of St. Luke ; another of St. John ; 
and so forth. And then, when they met for 
worship, — not in comfortable churches, 
such as we have now, but upon some dis- 
tant mountain-top, or, perhaps, in some re- 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 31 

tired valley, or secret cave among the Alps, 
where their enemies would not be likely to 
find them, — they would sing and pray ; 
and then the minister would call on the 
young man who knew the Gospel of St. 
John to give them the fourteenth and fif- 
teenth chapters of that book. He would 
stand up before the minister, and repeat the 
chapters from memory, beginning : " Let 
not your heart be troubled ; ye believe in 
God, believe also in me." Another would 
be called upon to repeat the ninety-first 
Psalm ; and he would begin : " He that 
dwelleth in the secret place of the Most 
High shall abide under the shadow of the 
Almighty." Then, perhaps, the minister 
would say, ^^Now let us have the fortieth 
chapter of Isaiah ; and another would rise 
and begin: "Comfort ye, comfort ye, my 
people saith your God." How interesting 
it is to think about this ! It was in such a 
way as this that they had church in those 
days. This was one of the ways in which 
the Bible was preserved before the art of 



32 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



printing was known. After it came to be 
printed, it was preserved sometimes by 
being stowed away in some old library, as 
was the case with the one which Lnther 
found, and which showed him how he was 
to be saved. And then sometimes in very 
curious ways the Bible was preserved. Let 
me mention two examples of this kind. 

A long while ago, there was a family, who 
loved the Bible, living in France. They 
lived at a time when the Eoman Catholic 
priests had great power there. They for- 
bade people to read the Bible, and threat- 
ened punishment, and even death, to any 
who were found reading it. The father of 
this family felt that whatever else he didn't 
have, he must have the Bible to read for 
himself and for his children. But he knew 
that unless he could hide it, it would soon 
be taken away from him. And he knew, 
too, that if he expected to keep it he must 
hide it in some place where the priests 
wouldn't think of looking for it. If he 
should put it in any of the drawers, or in 



THY TESTIMONIES AKE WONDERFUL. 33 

the cupboard, or under the bed, they would 
be sure to look there, and find it, and carry 
it off*. So he got a wooden stool, with sides 
round the top of it; he turned it upside 
down, and fastened the backs of the Bible 
to the underside of the top of the stool, so 
that when the stool was turned up, you 
could open the Bible, and turn over the 
leaves, and read in any part of it. Then 
he made a sliding lid, to the under part of 
the stool, so that the Bible might be pro- 
tected both from sight and from injury; 
and when that lid was pushed in there was 
nothing about the stool that would lead any- 
body to suspect what a treasure there was 
inside of it. It was just a common-looking 
wooden stool. It lay round about the room, 
as though it was of no sort of consequence ; 
and anybody might sit on it, or stand on it, 
as they pleased. If some one, who didn't 
know what was there, had been in that 
house, he would have thought it very 
strange to see the father of that family take 
that stool, every morning and evening, and 

8 



34 



BIBLE WONDEKS. 



carefully turn it upside clown, lay it rever- 
ently on his knee, draw out the lid, and 
gaze very earnestly on something inside the 
stool. In this way they kept their Bible for 
years, and found comfort and happiness in 
reading it. 

The priest often came in, and searched the 
house, to find the Bible, but he didn't find 
it. One time, when he had searched till he 
was tired, he came and sat down on that 
very stool to rest himself. And, as. he sat 
there, he wondered where in the world the 
Bible could be ; but he never found it out. 

After a while the father of this family 
heard of America, and of the liberty people 
had here to read the Bible as much as they 
please, and to worship God in any way they 
chose. So they all came over to this coun- 
trj^, and brought their precious Bible with 
them. They loved it, and guarded it as the 
greatest treasure they had, in theh^ new 
home. And when that good father died he 
handed down that Bible to his children, 
with a charge to keep it in remembrance of 



THY TESTIMONIES AEE WONDERFUL. 35 

the sufferings and trials he had passed 
through in his native land. 

That French family have long since passed 
away from earth, but that Bible, which was 
hidden in the footstool, is still to be seen in 
the hands of their children's children. I am 
told that the family that now own it live in 
Western Pennsylvania. I wish I knew 
where they lived, for I would like to go 
some time and look at that dear old Bible. 

There is a Bible in Lucas Co., Ohio, which 
was once preserved by being baked in a big 
loaf of bread. It now belongs to Mr. 
Schebolt, who lives near Maumee City, and 
is a member of the Moravian Church, or 
the Church of the United Brethren. Mr. 
Schebolt is a native of Bohemia, in Austria. 
This baked Bible was formerly the property 
of his grandmother, who was a faithful 
Protestant Christian. During one of the 
seasons when the Eoman Catholics were per- 
secuting the Protestants, in that country, a 
law was passed that every Bible in the hands 
of the people should be given up to the 



36 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



priests, that it might be burned. Then those 
who loved their Bibles had to contrive dif- 
ferent plans, in order to try and save their 
precious books. When the priests came 
round once to search the houses, it happened 
to be baking day. Mrs. Schebolt — the 
grandmother of the present owner of this 
Bible — had a large family. She had just 
prepared a great batch of dough, when she 
heard that the priest was coming ; so she 
took her precious Bible, wrapped it carefully 
up, and put it in the centre of a huge mass 
of dough, which was to fill her largest bread- 
pan, and stowed it away in the oven, and 
baked it. The priest came and searched the 
house carefully through, but he didn't find 
the Bible. And when the search was over, 
and the danger was passed, the Bible was 
taken out from the loaf, and found uninjured. 
That Bible is more than one hundred and 
fil*ty years old ; but yet it is the bread of 
life, as fresh, and sweet, and good as ever. 

The third wonder about the Bible is the 
way in lohich it has been preserved. 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 37 

Now, my dear young friends, if the Bible 
is such a wonderful book, how anxious you 
should be to understand more of it ! How 
thankful you should be for your Sunday 
school, and for your church, which help you 
to understand this blessed book ! Eead your 
Bible more. Commit it to memory more, 
and, above all, pray over it more. It is 
worth your while to learn all you can about 
the Bible. It will pay you for all your 
trouble. 

An old negro in the West Indies was very 
anxious to learn to read the Bible. He lived 
a long way from the missionary's house, and 
yet he would come, whenever he had time, 
to learn a lesson. It was such hard work, 
and he, made such little progress, that the 
missionary got tired, and told him one day 
that he had better give it up. " No, massa," 
said he, with great earnestness, — "me neb- 
ber gib it up, till me die." And then point- 
ing with his finger to the beautiful words 
which he just spelled out in John iii. 16, 
" God so loved the world," he said, with 



38 BIBLE WONDEES. 

tears in his eyes, "It's worf all de trouble, 
massa, to I'ead dat one verse ! " 

I will close with one verse from a hymn 
we sometimes sing, which says : — 

" Then let us love our Bibles more, 
And take a fresh delight 
By day to read their pages o'er. 
And meditate by night.'' 



II. 



Psalm cxix. 129. 



II. 



** S^1^2 itnixmaxiuu nxt ioaxtbtidnV' — ^salm tm, 120. 

In our last sermon we said that God's 
testimonies mean the things he tells us in 
the Bible. The meaning of our text is that 
the Bible is a wonderful book. Some of 
the wonders of the Bible are outside won-^ 
ders, and some are inside wonders. We 
have spoken of time of the outside wonders 
of the Bible. The first of these wonders 
was the way in which it was made. The 
second was the way in which it has been per- 
secuted. The third was the way in which it 
has been preserved. We are still speaking 
of the outside wonders of the Bible. 

Hie fourth of these wonders is the way in 

WHICH IT HAS BEEN SCATTEEED. 

It is very interesting to notice how many- 
ways God has led his people to make use of, 
in order to . have the Bible spread abroad. 

41 



42 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



During the times when men were persecuted 
for reading the Bible, the Waldensian Chris- 
tians, who lived in the mountains of Pied- 
mont and Savoy, used to send out their 
teachers to go through the country as ped- 
dlers, and then, while they were selling the 
articles they carried with them, whenever 
they got an opportunity, they would sell, or 
give away, a Bible or a Testament. 

Suppose you and I were visiting in the 
.house of a rich gentleman in those days, and 
in that part of the world; one day, while 
we are sitting in the parlor, the servant 
comes in, and says there is a travelling mer- 
chant at the door, with a great variety of 
nice things to sell. He is told to bring the 
man in. Presently he enters. He opens 
his bundle, and spreads out his goods ; he 
has rings, and seals, and trinkets, and veils, 
and lace-work, and many other things. One 
person buys a scarf, another buys a shawl, 
another some ear-rings, another a piece of 
lace, and so on. At last, the gentleman of 
the house says to him : — 



THY TESTBIOOTES ARE WONDERFUL. 43 

" Have you anything more to show us ? " 

"Oh, yes," says he, "I have somethmg 
more valuable than anything I have shown 
you yet." Then he slips his hand to the 
bottom of his bundle and brings out a little 
book, — a copy of the New Testament. 
None of the persons present have ever 
owned one, or hardly seen one before. 
"This," says the man, "is the precious 
word of God." Then he opens it, and 
reads a few verses, here and there, of the 
sweet words of Jesus. And when he sees 
that we are all very much interested in the 
book, he offers to give the gentleman of the 
house a copy of the book, if he will promise 
not to let the priests know about it. And 
in that way multitudes of copies of the 
Scriptures were scattered abroad among 
people, who were anxious to have them, 
when no one dared venture to sell them in 
public. 

In the fifteenth century a company of 
Eomish priests met together in Earl Street, 
Blackfriars, London, to talk about an edi- 



44 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



tion of the Bible, which a good English min- 
ister, named Wyclif, had just had printed. 
They condemned Wyclif as a bad man ; 
and they all agreed in passing this resolu- 
tion : " The Bible is a dangerous book. It 
shall NOT be circulated." But God, in his 
wise providence, has so ordered things that 
now, on the very spot where those priests 
met to destroy the Bible, and to declare 
that it should not be circulated, is standing 
the house of " The British and Foreign 
Bible Society." This society was formed 
for the very purpose of scattering the Bible 
all over the world. What a wonderful 
thing it is that God should have caused this 
society to be established just in that place! 
And if those old priests — who met there so 
long ago to stop the spread of the Bible, and 
to declare that it should not be circulated — 
could only come back to that same spot; 
if they could go through the Bible house 
and see what it is doing ; if they could 
know that it was making Bibles at such a 
rate, that for almost every tick of the watch, 



THT TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 45 

day and night, all through the year, a Bible 
is finished ; if they could be told that this 
society has been engaged in this work for 
more than fifty years ; that it has scattered 
Bibles at the rate of a million a year, during 
all those years, and that now it is scatter- 
ing them at the rate of two millions a year, 
— I wonder what they would think about 
their old resolution, that the Bible should 
not be circulated ? 

And here I may mention another thing, of 
the same wonderful character, connected with 
the spread of the Bible. During the last 
century there was a celebrated infidel in 
France, whose name was Voltaire. He 
hated the Bible very much. Like the old 
priests in London he made up his mind that 
the spreading of the Bible should be 
stopped. He bought a printing-press, to 
be used for the purpose of stopping the 
spread of the Bible. He employed that 
press for printing tracts against the Bible, 
and used to boast that, before he died, he 
would destroy the religion of Jesus, and 



46 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



stop people from reading the Bible. But, 
after a few years, the infidel Voltaire died 
a miserable death ; while the Bible has kept 
on in its way through the world. It has 
continued to spread more and more. And 
the most singular thing about this is that 
after the death of Voltaire, the printing- 
press, which he bought and used on pur- 
pose to stop the spread of the Bible, fell 
into the hands of the friends of the Bible ; 
and that very printing-press has since been 
used for the purpose of printing and circu- 
lating the Bible. How wonderful this is ! 

Sometimes when the enemies of the Bible 
have tried in some particular way to stop 
the circulation of it, God has made use of 
that very thing to spread it more and more. 
Here is an illustration of what I mean. 
More than three hundred years ago, a good 
man, in England, whose name was Tindal, 
made the first translation of the New Testa- 
ment into the Eno^lish lanaaiaoe. He had 
to go out of England, over on the continent, 
to get it printed. When it was finished it 



THY TESTBIONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 47 

was sent to London, and offered for sale at 
the booksellers. The Eomish Bishop of 
London got a law passed forbiddmg any- 
body to bny, or sell, or read, the Bible. 
This only made the people more anxious 
to have the Scriptures than before. The 
Bishop of London employed persons to go 
about the city and buy up all the Bibles and 
Testaments they could find, that he might 
made a grand bonfire of them. About that 
time, a number of persons had been con- 
demned to death for the sin of owning and 
reading the Bible. Before those men were 
executed, the magistrate told one of them 
that he would pardon him and spare his life, 
on condition that he would tell him who it 
was, in the city of London, that was giving 
to that man Tindal the greatest help and 
encouragement to print and circulate the 
Scriptures. After the magistrate had sol- 
emnly bound himself to keep this promise, 
the prisoner said : — 

"Please your lordship, it is the Bishop 
of London. He buys up the Bibles to burn 



48 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



them. And then for every one he burns 
three or four more are printed." 

And so God made the very enemies of the 
Bible to help in spreading it abroad. 

I might fill a whole book with anecdotes 
of the different wonderful ways in which 
God has spread the Bible in different places. 
I have only time to mention one or two. 

Who would ever think that God would 
make use of anything so wicked as slave- 
stealing to spread the Bible ? Yet here is a 
case of just this kind. 

Some years ago, a company of slave- 
catchers, in Africa, went out on their horri- 
ble business. At midnight they surrounded 
a village. They set fire to the huts in dif- 
ferent places. When the frightened people 
ran into the fields and woods to escape the 
flames, the wi'etched men, who were there, 
seized them and made them prisoners. A 
little boy, named Adjai, was caught that 
night. He was separated from his mother 
and sisters. He was carried down to the 
coast, and put on board a crowded slave- 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 49 

ship, to be carried to the Island of Cuba, 
and sold as a slave. An English cruiser 
captured that slaver. The slaves were car- 
ried to Sierra Leone, and put into the mis- 
sion school there. Adjai soon learned to 
read. He became a tutor ; then a teacher ; 
then he became a Christian and joined the 
church. Afterwards, he was sent to Eng- 
land to be educated. Then he was or- 
dained as a minister. He went out as a 
missionary to his o^vn country. His mother, 
who had never seen him since the night in 
which the slave-stealers burnt their village 
and stole them away, heard the gospel from 
his lips and became a Christian. After- 
wards he was made a bishop. And so, he, 
who was once little Adjai, — the slave-boy, 
— is now the Rt. Rev. Samuel Crowther, 
Bishop of the Niger. He is the first col- 
ored man, in connection with the English 
church, who has been made a bishop. And 
now, he goes up the Eiver Niger, and far 
into the interior of Africa, carrying the 

Bible to those who have never heard of 
4 



50 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



it before. How strange that God should 
make use of wicked slave-stealers to help 
in spreading the Bible ! 

Sometimes, God makes use of the very 
cruelty of the heathen to spread the Bible. 
One night, a lion crept into a hut in Africa, 
seized hold of a little girl, about six years 
of age, and carried her off. The little girl 
screamed. Her parents heard her. They 
ran after the lion, shouting and making a 
great noise. After carrying her for some 
distance, he dropped the child and ran off. 
Her parents took her home. She was 
dreadfully wounded by the great sharp teeth 
of the lion. Her father thought she would 
die from her wounds. He talked it over 
with his wife, and they made up their minds 
the next day, according to the heathen cus- 
toms, that, as she couldn't live, it wasn't 
worth while to have any more trouble with 
her. So they gave her her choice, either to 
be buried alive at once, or to be taken into 
the woods and left there. How true it is, 
as the Bible says, that " The dark places of 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 51 

the earth are full of the habitations of cru- 
elty ! " The little girl chose the woods. 
They took her and left her there all alone, 
bleeding, and wounded, with nothing but a 
little rice and water. The poor child knew 
that there was a missionary living not very 
far off. She thought she would try and 
crawl to his house, for she couldn't walk. 
While she was trying to do this God sent 
the missionary that way. He picked her up 
and carried her home. He and his wife 
were kind to her, and took care of her. 
Her wounds healed and she got well. She 
attended the mission school. She became 
a Christian, and then a teacher, and now 
she is helping to spread the Bible among 
the heathen. 

The "American Bible Society" publishes 
more than a million copies of the Bible 
every year. The Bible has now been pub- 
lished in one hundred seventy-eight different 
languages. How interesting it would be if 
we could see one page out of all these dif- 
ferent Bibles ! For though we could not 



52 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



read them it would be pleasant to see how 
they looked. We may enjoy this pleasure, 
in part, if we like, for the "American Sun- 
day School Union" has published a large 
card, which contains a photograph copy of 
the Lord's prayer in fifty-four of the lan- 
guages into which the Bible has been trans- 
lated. 

The fourth wonder of the Bible is the way 
in which it has been scattered. 

The fifth iDonder of the Bible is the way 

IN ^YHICH IT HAS BEEN LOVED. 

There never was any book, in the world, 
lhat has been so much hated by its enemies, 
or so much loved by its friends, as the 
Bible. David, the king of Israel, said that 
God's word was, to him, "sweeter than 
honey and the honeycomb," and "more 
precious than gold and silver." And where- 
ever the Bible has gone there have been 
some who have learned to love it just as 
David did. There is hardly any end to the 
stories that may be told for the purpose of 
showing how much the Bible has been loved. 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 53 

Alfred the Great was one of the best 
kmgs that ever lived. It is nearly a thou- 
sand years now since the time of his reign. 
That was long before the art of printing was 
discovered. There were no copies of the 
Scriptures then, but such as were written out 
by the hand. Alfred had many trials and 
troubles. He had constant wars with the 
Danes, who overrun his kingdom, and tried 
to take it away from him. But he loved 
the Bible very much ; and in all his troubles 
he found great comfort in reading it. He 
copied out all the Psalms with his own hand, 
and carried the copy in his bosom, that he 
might have it at hand to read whenever he 
had time. Sometimes he used to get up at 
night, and spend a long time in reading the 
Bible, and praying to God that he might be 
able to understand it more. He loved it so 
much, and found so much comfort in it, that 
he wanted his people to become acquainted 
with it; and he actually began a transla- 
tion of a part of the Bible into the Anglo- 
Saxon language, — the English of that day, 



54 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



— for the use of his people. But he died 
before he was able to finish it. 

Lady Jane Gray, of whom we read in 
English history, was so fond of the Bible, 
that when her parents and friends were out 
riding and hunting, she would stay at 
home, and read it, rather than join them in 
their sports. And when some one asked 
her, one day, why she did this, she laid her 
hand on the Bible, near her, and smiling, 
said, All other pleasm^es are only shadows 
compared to those I find in reading this 
blessed book." 

The friends of the Bible have proved their 
love of it by giving up houses, and lands, 
and relatives, and friends, and even life it- 
self, rather than give up the Bible. 

An English vessel was wrecked at sea. 
A Christian sailor, on board that vessel, had 
to choose between trying to save his money 
or his Bible. He took his Bible and left the 
money. He clung to the wreck till all but 
himself had perished. Then, tying his 
Bible round his neck, with a handkerchief 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WOKDERFUL. 55 

he floated off on a broken piece of the 
wreck till he was picked up. While drift- 
ing about on that fragment of the wreck, he 
found a comfort in reading his Bible, which 
all the gold and silver in the world could not 
have given him. 

During the days of persecution, a Chris- 
tian man was put in prison. It was a dun- 
geon in which he was confined ; no light 
ever visited his dark cell, except what came 
through the door, when the jailer brought 
him his meals ; but, instead of employing 
that light to eat his meals by, he employed 
it in reading his Bible. And when he was 
asked why he did so, his reply was, ^^I can 
find the way to my mouth in the dark, but I 
cannot read the Bible in the dark." 

A peasant, in the county of Cork, Ire- 
land, heard that a gentleman, in his neigh- 
borhood, had a copy of the Scriptures in the 
Irish language. He asked the gentleman 
to let him see it. After looking at it with 
great interest, he asked the gentleman if he 
would lend it to him till he could write off a 



56 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



copy of it. The gentleman said he could 
not get another copy, and he was afraid that 
this might be lost. Knowing how poor this 
peasant was, the gentleman asked him : — 

" Where will you get the paper ? " 

"rUbuy it." 

"And the pens and ink?" 

"Ill buy them." 

"And where will you find a place to 
write ? " 

"If your honor will allow me your hall, 
I'll come after my day's work is over and 
take a copy, a little at a time, in the even- 
ings." 

The gentleman was so struck with this 
man's loye for the Bible, and the earnestness 
of his desire to have a copy of it, that he 
gave him the use of his hall, and a light that 
he might get a copy of the Scriptm*es. The 
man was true to his purpose, and persevered 
in his work, till, with his own hand, he had 
written out a copy of the whole New Testa- 
ment. Afterwards a printed copy was given 
him in exchange for this, and the written 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 57 

Testament was given to the British and For- 
eign Bible Society, and kept by them as a 
proof of the love of the Irish for the Bible. 

Some years ago, there were two little 
boys, in London, who had lost both their 
parents. One of them was about eleven, 
and the other thirteen, years of age. They 
had been taught to love their Bible, and 
that precious Saviour of whom it tells. 
The only friend they had in the world, when 
their parents died, was an uncle, who lived 
in Liverpool. So they set off to walk, from 
London to Liverpool, to try and find their 
imcle. After walking many weary miles 
they reached a place called Warrington, 
about twenty miles from Liverpool. With 
thcK little bundles in their hands, they went 
to a lodging-house, and asked for a night's 
shelter. They were asked to pay for en- 
trance ; but they said they had no money. 
The keeper of the house saw that one of 
them had, in his jacket pocket, a neatly 
covered Bible, and offered to give him five 
shillings for it. "No," said the pale-faced 



58 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



boy, as the big tears started iuto his eyes, 
"we'll starve before we'll sell our Bible." 
The man was surprised to find the boys so 
decided ; and, in order to try them further, 
he offered six shillings, and then ten shil- 
lings to those poor, hungry boys for their 
book. But, with the same fii-mness, they 
clung to that precious .book. "No," said 
they, "it has been our support and com- 
fort all the way from London. Often, when 
hungry and tired, we have sat down by the 
road-side, and read in our Bible, and it has 
seemed like meat, and drink, and rest to 
us." 

"But," said the man, "suppose, when you 
get to Liverpool, your uncle refuses to help 
you ; what will you do then ? " 

"We'll trust that to God," said the 
younger of the two boys ; " for in this 
book," — laying his hand on the Bible, — 
"it says, ^ When my father and mother for- 
sake me, then the Lord will take me up.'" 

The fifth wonder connected with the Bible 
is the way in which it has been loved. 



THY TESTIMONIES ARE WOKDERFUL. 59 

The sixth and last wonder connected with 
the Bible is the way lnt which it has been 

STUDIED. 

There is no other book in the world that 
has ever been half so much studied as the 
Bible. There is no other book that will 
bear to be studied as the Bible is. We can 
soon find out all that is in any other book ; 
and then, as soon as we feel that it has 
nothing more to tell us, we get tired of it, 
and want a new book. I remember very 
well the first book I ever read all through. 
It was Robinson Crusoe ; I thought it was 
the most wonderful book that ever was. I 
was so much interested in it that I used to 
sit up at night, as late as my mother would 
let me, for the purpose of reading it; and 
then, when I went to bed, I used to lie 
awake and tell over, to my younger brother, 
all that I had been reading about Eobinson, 
and his man Friday, and the savages. But, 
suppose I should undertake to read Eobin- 
son Crusoe every morning and evening, and 
to preach about it as I do with the Bible, 



60 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



how soon I should get tired of reading it, 
and should feel that there was nothing left 
for me to put into my sermons. And it 
would just be the same with " The Pilgrim's 
Progress," or "Milton's Paradise Lost," or 
any other book in the world, except the 
Bible. The books that men make are like 
wells, or little ponds of water ; some are 
deeper than others ; but j^et, we can take a 
pole, or a line, and let it down in the water, 
and we can soon touch the bottom. But 
God's book — the Bible — is like the ocean. 
There are some places in it where the water 
is so shallow that a child may wade in it 
with entire safety. But there are other 
places where the water is so deep that a 
giant might swim in it ; and with the longest 
line ever let down no one can touch the 
bottom. In the city of Philadelphia there 
are more than three hundred ministers of 
the gospel. They are engaged, all the time, 
in reading, and studying, and preaching, 
about the things of which the Bible tells us. 
Some of them have been engaged in this 



THY TESTIjVIONIES ARE WONDERFUL. 61 

way for twenty, or thirty, or forty years. 
And yet they have never got to the bottom 
of it. And if they should live to be as old 
as Methuselah, and should keep on studying 
and preaching about the Bible all the time, 
they would never get through with it. The 
time would never come when they would 
have to come before their congregations and 
say, " We have found out all that is in the 
Bible. There is nothing more left now for 
us to preach about." But there is no other 
book in the world that could be read and 
studied and preached about in this way. 

Some years ago, a gentleman, in England, 
wanted to find out how many books had 
been written on the Bible. It was a hard 
thing to tell ; but he resolved to try. He 
spent a wonderful deal of time, and money, 
and labor, in making the inquiry. When 
he got through, he made a list, or catalogue, 
of all the different works. That catalogue 
itself made a large volume ; and how many 
books do you suppose were in it? More 
than sixty tltousand! Only think of it! 



62 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



More than sixty thousand volumes, written 
on this one book. K those vokimes were 
all collected together they would make one 
of the largest libraries in the United States. 
The Philadelphia Library, which fills up that 
large building on Fifth Street below Chest- 
nut, has nearly eighty thousand volumes in 
it. Those volumes are about history, and 
geography, and astronomy, and botany, and 
voyages, and travels, and biography, and 
farming, and chemistry, and mathematics, 
and politics, and religion, and everything in 
the world that men can think, and talk, and 
write about. It is worth your while to go 
into that library, and look round on the 
great multitude of books that are there. 
And while you are looking at them you can 
say to yourself, " Here is a large library of 
books written on every possible variety of 
subject. And yet, on the Bible alone, there 
have been published almost as many books 
as are here." 

I suppose there are more books published 
about the Bible every year than about any 



THT TESTIMONIES AKE WONDERFUL. 63 

other one subject in the world ; and still no 
one can get through with the Bible, or reach 
the bottom of it. What a wonderful book 
the Bible is ! How wonderful it is in the 
way in which it has been studied ! 

Let me give you now some striking exam- 
ples of the way in which this blessed book 
has been studied. 

A Christian emperor, whose name was 
Theodosius, wrote out the whole of the New 
Testament with his own hand, on purpose to 
fix its words better in his memory. Another 
emperor, of the same name, who was very 
much occupied in business during the day, 
used to spend a portion of every night, in 
not only reading, but studying the Scrip- 
tures. Prince George, of Transylvania, 
read the whole Bible over twenty-seven 
times. And one of the kings of Arragon 
was so interested in the study of the Scrip- 
tures, that he read them through, together 
with a large commentary, fourteen times. 

Sir Henry Wotten, an English nobleman, 
was very much engaged in public business ; 



64 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



yet he kept the Bible before him, day and 
night, that, at leisure moments, he might 
read a verse or two ; and when his public 
duties were over, he always spent an hour or 
two in studying the Bible. And a French 
nobleman, named De Eenty, used every 
morning to read three chapters of the Bible, 
on his bended knees, stopping every little 
while to pray that God would help him to 
understand it. 

The Eev. William Eomaine, one of the 
best muiisters of the Church of England, 
for the last thirty years of his life never 
read or studied any other book but the 
Bible. 

There was an Irish peasant who had got 
possession of a copy of the Bible, and was 
so fond of it that he spent all the leisure 
time he had in studjdng it. The Eomish 
priest found him, one day, with the Bible 
in his hand, and asked him what warrant he 
had to read the Bible for himself. "Faith," 
says he, "and plase yer riverence, I have a 
sarch warrant. For sure and didn't the 



THT TESTIMOMES ARE WONDERFUL. 65 

blessed Master say " 8arch the Scriptures " ? 
(John V. 39.) And thus we see that the 
Bible is a wonderful book for the way in 
which it has been studied. 

We have spoken now of six of the outside 
wonders of the Bible. The first wonder 
about it is the way in which it was made. 
The second is the way in which it has 
been persecuted ; the third is the way in 
which it has h^o^n preserved ; the fourth, the 
way in which it has been scattered; the 
fifth, the way in which it has been loved; 
and the sixth, the way in which it has been 
studied. 

My dear, young friends, let me entreat 
you to make a right use of your Bible. 
Wonderful as this book is, it will do you no 
good to have it, unless you use it properly. 
You ought to use your Bible as the sailor, 
when at sea, uses his compass. The com- 
pass is set down before the man who stands 
at the helm, or rudder, to steer the ship ; 
and he keeps looking at the compass all the 
time, in order to find out how he is to steer 

5 



66 



BIBLE WOKDEES. 



the vessel, so that he may reach " the haven 
where he would be," or the place at which 
he desires to arrive. And just in the same 
way the Bible must be our compass. If we 
read it, and study it carefully, and espe- 
cially, if, like David, we read it with the 
prayer, "Open thou mine eyes that I may 
behold wondrous things out of thy law," 
then we shall always know what to do, and 
how to act. This blessed compass will 
always point us in the right direction. It 
will guide us safely through all the dangers 
that are before us in the voyage of life. It 
will lead us to Jesus, as our Friend and 
Saviour. He will pardon our sins. He 
wiU change our hearts, and bring us to his 
heavenly home at last. 



III. 




lis mmt B^ull hit mlh)3 'MontstxfuV^ 



Isaiah ix. 6. 



Ill 



** name sl^all hz CTdltij WiaxiiitxMJ* — ^mvi)^ tx. S. 

We have spoken before of some of the 
outside wonders of the Bible. Now, we are 
going to open the book and talk about some 
of the wonderful things that are inside of 
it. There are a great many wonders in the 
Bible; but, among them all, Jesus is the 
greatest. We must speak about 7^^m, before 
we begin to speak about anything else. 

Suppose that we are in the country in the 
summer time. We get up very early, one 
beautiful morning, and go to the window to 
look out upon the country. Our window 
commands a view of a very charming land- 
scape. There is a fine range of hills on one 
side, a large forest of trees on the other, 
and between them are beautiful fields, with 
farm-houses and gardens scattered over 
them. But, just as we get to the window, 

69 



70 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



the Sim is rising. As he gets up among the 
clouds, he pours over them a flood of light. 
Gold, and purple, and crimson, and every 
variety of color seems to be shining and 
sparkling there together. How beautiful, 
how glorious it is ! The first thing we look 
at, as we get to the window, is the sun, — 
the golden, glorious sun. The hills are 
beautiful. The forests are beautiful. The 
fields are beautiful. The gardens are beau- 
tiful, with their fragrant, blooming flowers. 
Everything around is beautiful ; but we can- 
not tm-n aside to look at an}i:hing else, till 
we have stopped a good while first to look at 
the sun ; for that is more beautiful than all 
the rest. And what the sun is among the 
many beauties of the landscape, Jesus is 
among the many wonders of the Bible. Of 
all its wonders he is the most wonderful. 

As we enter the Bible, to talk about its 
wonders, it is right and proper that we 
should begin with talking about him, who is 
the greatest wonder of which the Bible tells us. 

Seven hundred years before he was born 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 



71 



into our world, the prophet Isaiah spoke 
about him to the Jews. He told of a great 
many things that he was to do when he 
came ; and he said that " his name should be 
called Wonderful." The Wonderful Isfame 
is the first of the inside wonders of the 
Bible. We might speak of a great many 
things connected with the name of Jesus, on 
account of which it may well be called won- 
derful, but we shall only speak now of two. 

The name of Jesus is wonderfid^ in the 
first place, for its many meanings. 

Most of the other persons mentioned in 
the Bible had but one name, and that name 
had but one meaning. The first man that 
God made was called Adam. The meaning 
of that is earth, or red, referring to the dust 
out of which he was made. The man who 
built the ark had but one name, that was 
Noah, which means comfort. This name 
was given to him because his parents thought 
he would be a comfort to them. The man 
from whom the Jewish nation sprung had 
but one name. At first, his name was 



72 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



spelled in two syllables, — Ab-ram. This 
means the great, or high father. Then God 
put two more letters, — the letters ha, — 
in the middle of his name. This made it a 
name of three syllables, Ab-ra-ham. Its 
meaning is, "a father of many nations." 
The great warrior king of Israel had but 
one name, — David, — which means beloved. 
He is sometimes spoken of as " the son of 
Jesse;" or as "the sweet singer of Israel;" 
but David was his only name. David's son 
— the wisest king that ever reigned — had 
two names. He was first called Jedidiah, 
which means beloved of the Lord ; and then 
Solomon, which means peaceful. 

In our days, most persons have two or 
three names ; but each of these has but one 
meaning, and that is generally a very simple 
one. Let us take for example one of the 
greatest names we have in our nation's his- 
tory, — the name of George Washington. 
That name is known all over the world; 
and it deserves to be so known. When we 
think of all Washington did for his country, 



THE WOKDEEFUL NAIME. 



73 



we feel that there is a great deal of meaning 
in his name. But when we look at the 
name itself, — George Washington, — it 
means very little. George means a farmer. 
Washington is made up of three old English 
words. Wash, or weis, was a word that 
was formerly used to mean a shallow part 
of a river near the sea ; ing was a word that 
meant a meadow, or low ground ; and ton, 
or dun, meant a hill or town. And so this 
great name — George Washington — only 
means, the farmer who lived on the meadow, 
or low ground, where the river was shallow, 
near the sea. 

And it is just the same with the names 
of all men. They are very soon told, and 
have very little meaning in them. But it is 
very different with Jesus. He has a great 
number of names, and these have 7nany 
meanings. The name commonly given to 
him is Jesus Christ. Jesus means Saviour; 
and Christ means anointed ; and so the 
meaning of this name is "the anointed 
Saviour." To anoint a person, or thing, 



74 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



means to put oil on it. In old times, when 
a person was consecrated, or set apart to be 
a king, or priest, it was the custom to pom* 
oil on his head. This was called anointing 
him. We read, in the Bible, how the 
prophet Samuel, in this way, anointed David 
to be king over Israel, when he was only a 
poor shepherd's boy. The story is a very 
interesting one ; and, if you wish to read it, 
you may find it in 1 Samuel xvi. And, 
in this way, the Bible tells us that " God 
hath anointed Jesus with the oil of glad- 
7iess,^^ to be both a king and a priest to his 
j)eople. (Heb. i. 9.) Jesus Christ — the 
anointed Saviour — is a very precious and 
beautiful name. But there are a great many 
other names that Jesus has, and the many 
meanings of them are wonderful. The whole 
Bible is taken up with giving us an account 
of the things that he has already done and 
suffered for us ; or of the things that he 
either is doing for us now, or loill do for us 
by and by. So that the Bible may be called 
a book of definitions of the names of Jesus. 



THE WONDERFUL NAIVIE. 



75 



I cannot attempt to tell you all the names 
of Jesus found in the Bible ; but I will give 
you a list of some of them. And, as I men- 
tion the different names, I want you all to 
listen, and count them over quietly to your- 
selves, so that, when we stop, you can tell 
me how many names we have had. Now, 
get ready. Jesus is called, Jehovah; the 
Lord Jehovah ; Jehovah of hosts ; the Lord 
our righteousness ; God ; the mighty God ; 
the everlasting God ; the true God ; God 
blessed forever ; God my Saviour ; my Lord 
and my God ; God manifest in the flesh ; 
Emmanuel; the great God and Saviour; 
the Highest; the Son of God; his dear 
Son ; his only begotten Son ; the Son of the 
Blessed; the Almighty; Creator of all 
things ; Upholder of all things ; Alpha and 
Omega; the Beginning and the End; the 
First and the Last ; the Life ; Eternal Life ; 
the Word; the Word of God; the Word 
made flesh ; Image of the invisible God ; 
the Brightness of the Father's glory, the 
Express Image of his person ; Wisdom of 



76 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



God; Power of God; Messenger of the 
Covenant ; Angel of Jehovah ; Angel of 
God ; Angel of his presence ; Koot of 
Jesse ; Eoot of David ; Eoot and Offspring 
of David ; Branch of Eighteousness ; a 
Eighteous Branch ; the Vine ; the true Vine ; 
the Tree of Life ; the Bread of God ; the 
Bread from heaven ; the Bread of life ; living 
Bread ; hidden Manna ; Plant of Eenown ; 
Cluster of Camphire ; Lily of the Valleys ; 
Bundle of Myrrh; Eose of Sharon; Lamb 
of God ; Lamb without blemish ; Lamb that 
was slain ; Lamb in the midst of the throne ; 
Bridegroom ; Good Shepherd ; Jehovah's 
Shepherd ; Great Shepherd ; the Eock ; my 
strong Eock ; the Eock of ages ; Eock of 
habitation ; Eock of salvation ; my Eock 
and my Eedeemer ; my Eock and Fortress ; 
that spiritual Eock ; the Eock that followed 
them ; the Surety ; the Daysman ; the High- 
Priest ; the Great High-Priest ; the Mercy- 
seat ; the Mediator ; the Forerunner ; the 
Propitiation ; a Eansom ; Minister of the 
Circumcision ; the Altar ; the Sacrifice ; the 



THE WONDEEFUL NAME. 



77 



Oflfering; the Offerer; chief Corner-Stone ; 
a tried Stone ; an elect Stone ; a precious 
Stone ; the Builder ; the Foundation ; a 
Stone of stumbling ; a Eock of offence ; 
Jesus; a Saviour; Saviour of the world; 
Jesus Christ; the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus 
Christ the righteous ; Jesus of Nazareth ; 
Messiah; Christ the Lord; the Christ of 
God ; the Light ; the true Light ; a great 
Light ; Light of the Gentiles ; the Light of 
men; the Light of the world; a Star; the 
bright and Morning Star ; the Sun of Right- 
eousness ; the Dayspring from on high ; 
the Just One ; the Holy One of God ; the 
Captain of our salvation; the Captain of 
the host of the Lord; a Commander; a 
Euler; a Governor; a Deliverer; the Lion 
of the tribe of Judah ; an Ensign of the 
people ; the Author and Finisher of our 
faith ; Lord of the Sabbath ; Lord of lords ; 
King of kings ; Lord both of the dead and 
the living ; Lord of peace ; Lord of all ; a 
Prince and Saviour ; Prince of peace ; Prince 
of life ; Prince of the kings of the earth ; 



78 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



Messiah the Prince ; King of the Jews ; 
King of saints ; King of glory ; King of 
Israel ; the King in his beauty ; King of the 
daughter of Zion ; the Judge ; the Eighteous 
Judge; the Truth; the Way; the Life; 
the faithful and true Witness ; the Wonder- 
ful; the Counsellor; the Mighty God; the 
Everlasting Father. Here we have more than 
one hundred and fifty different names. And 
these are not all. There are more still. 
But these are enough. When we read over 
these names of Jesus, — so many and so 
different, — it just seems as if the Bible 
were a sort of kaleidoscope. You all know 
what this is. And when you look through 
it, and keep turning it round, you know, 
you are all the time seeing some new form 
of beauty. With every movement the 
beads, and bits of glass, and different things 
in it keep changing their shape, and their 
beauty. It seems as though you never 
would get tired of looking at it. And the 
Bible is like such a kaleidoscope. The 
names of Jesus, and the promises about 



THE WONDEEFUL NAME. 



79 



him, take the place of the beads and bits of 
glass. And, as we read its pages, it is like 
turning the kaleidoscope. Everything in it 
tells about Jesus. The names of Jesus are 
turning up in different forms all the time. 
First you think this is the most beautiful ; 
then you think that is ; till, by and by, you 
think they are all so beautiful, that you can't 
tell which you like best. 

"His name shall be called Wonderful." 
The name of Jesus is wonderful, in the first 
place, because of its many meanings. 

In the second place, the name of Jesus is a 
ivonderful name^ for the loye co^^jN^ected 

WITH IT. 

There are a great many wonderful things 
in this world, but the most wonderful of 
them all is — the love of Jesus. The Bible 
says it is " past finding out." Sometimes 
we hear of persons trying to find the bot- 
tom of the sea, in places where the water is 
very deep ; but they tell us that they get to 
the end of their line before they can touch 
the bottom. Then they say they can't 



80 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



fathom that water ; there are no soundings hi 
it. This means, they can't tell how deep it 
is. And the love of Jesus is just like one 
of those deep places in the sea. There is no 
such thing as sounding it. It is impossible 
to find the bottom of it. It never had a be- 
ginning, and it never will have an end. We 
see how wonderful the love of Jesus is in 
two things : one is in lohat he did for us; the 
other in what he suffered for us. 

What Jesus did for us, shows how won- 
derful his love is. And the best way of 
showing you what is meant by this is to 
give you one or two illustrations. When 
the Moravian missionaries first wanted to go 
and preach to the negroes in the West India 
Islands, they were told that those negroes 
were slaves, and that their masters wouldn't 
let them have any time to go to church, or to 
school, or to learn an}i;hing about Jesus. 
Then those good missionaries — Leonard Do- 
ber and his companion — said, "Well, then, 
if we can't tell them about Jesus in any other 
way, we will go and become slaves ourselves, 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 



81 



that we may talk to them about the wonder- 
ful love of Jesus, while we are working with 
them in the fields." 

How great the love was which those mis- 
sionaries had for the souls of the heathen ! 
They didn't have to do this. But suppose 
they had done it. Then, when they had be- 
come servants, and had been working hard 
all day, it might well have been said, that 
what they did for those negroes showed the 
greatness of their love to them. 

And this illustrates what Jesus has done 
for us. The Bible tells us that he became a 
servant, took upon Jdm the form of a 

servant, He undertook to do our work 
for us. He became obedient to God's holy 
law. He took our place, and bound himself 
to do all that God required of us. And for 
Jesus to come down from heaven, and live in 
this dark, sinful world, and obey the law for 
us, was ten thousand times harder than it 
would have been for those Moravian mission- 
aries to have left their homes in Europe, and 
have gone to work as slaves in the West 
6 



82 



BIBLE WOKDERS. 



Liclies. And that Jesus was willing to do 
this, and that he aduaHy did it, shows how 
wonderful his love is. 

Let us take another ilkistration. This we 
read about in the history of Eome. In the 
city of Eome there used to he a large open 
space, like one of our city squares. It was 
called the Forum. Around the sides of it 
the courts and public buildings were placed. 
About three or four hundred years before 
the time of our Saviour, there came suddenly, 
by an earthquake no doubt, a large, deep pit, 
or chasm, right in the midst of the Forum. 
It was a very ugly thing to have in such a 
public place, and very dangerous. The 
Roman people tried to fill it up ; but they 
couldn't do it. Whatever they threw into it 
sank right out of sight, as though there was 
no bottom to that dreadful chasm. Then 
they went to the priests of their idol gods, as 
they were accustomed to do, in difficult 
cases, that they might find out what to do. 
They asked the priests what they must do in 
order to fill up the terrible pit which had 



THE WONDEEFUL NAJVIE. 



83 



been made in the midst of their Fornm. 
The answer which the priests gave them was 
that that opening would never be closed till 
they had thrown into it the most precious 
and valuable things they had in Rome. 
This threw the people into a great wonder- 
ment. Everybody was asking, Yfhat can 
this mean ? Some thought it meant all the 
gold and silver in the city. Some thought 
it meant all the gems and jewels they had. 
Some thought this thing was meant by it ; and 
others thought that . But they could not agree 
about what was to be thrown in. There was 
a brave young nobleman living in Rome, at 
that time, who was a soldier. His name was 
Manlius Curtius. He thought a great deal 
about this answer which the priests had 
given. He used to get up at night, and go 
to the Forum, and walk around that deep, 
dark, dreadful pit to think how it could be 
closed. Then he said to himself, "The 
most precious and valuable things in the 
city of Rome are the arms and courage of 
her soldiers. These must be thrown in. But 



84 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



all the soldiers can't go iu. No. Some one 
must go in to represent the rest. Who shall 
it be? I luill do it.^'' 

Then he told his friends he was going to 
offer himself a sacrifice for the safety of the 
city. He was willing to throw himself into 
that yawning gulf. They tried to persuade 
him not to do so. But he wouldn't listen to 
them. The day was fixed, and notice was 
given of it. All Eome turned out to see the 
strange sight. The brave soldier dressed him- 
self in all his shining armor, as though he were 
going into battle . He mounted his war-horse, 
dressed in all its rich trappings. He had his 
helmet on his head, his shield on his left arm, 
and in his right hand his sword. He starts on 
a canter, along the principal street leading to 
the Forum. The crowds of people gaze at 
him, with a strange sort of silent awe, as he 
passes by. But no one speaks ; no one 
moves. The stillness of death is over all 
that vast multitude. No sound is heard but 
the clanging of his armor, and the clatter of 
his horse's feet, as he hastens on his way. 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 



85 



Now the Forum is in sight. There is the 
yawning pit. As he nears it, he dashes his 
stirrups into his horse's sides. This quick- 
ens his pace into a gallop. Now he reaches 
the edge of the pit. He makes a mighty 
spring. There, for a moment, the horse and 
his rider hanging over that dreadful gulf, — 
then — down they plunge — and are seen 
no more. The most precious and valuable 
things of Eome are thrown into it. The pit 
closes. That is the story. 

How much Manlius Curtius must have 
loved Eome to have been willing to sacrifice 
himself for it ! And what an illustration this 
affords of the love of Jesus ! Sin had opened 
a dreadful gulf, right before us, in our way 
to heaven. Nobody could fill it up. No- 
body could get round it. Nobody could get 
over it. And unless Jesus had come to help 
us not one of the human family would ever 
have gotten over that gulf into heaven. 
Jesus came down from heaven and threw 
himself into this gulf. He did not close it up 
so that all should be saved; but he made 



86 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



a way, — a bridge, — oyer it, so that all who 
believe in him may get over it and be 
saved. It showed great love in Manlius 
Curtius to sacrifice himself for Eome. But 
it was for his friends, and those who loved 
him, that he died. Jesus died for us when 
we were his enemies. It shows great love 
when a man is willing to die for his friends ; 
but, oh, how much more wonderful it is that 
Jesus was willins: to die for his enemies ! 

What Jesus did for us shows how wonder- 
ful his love is. And then what he suffered 
for us shows the same, 

Jesus lived thirty years in om^ world, and 
he was suffering for us all the time. 

It was not only in the garden of Gethsem- 
ane, when bathed in that bloody sweat, and 
on Calvary, when they nailed him to the cross, 
that he suffered. No ; but every hom^ of his 
life was an hour of suffering ; and every step 
he took, from the manger to the cross, was 
a step of suffering. And there were two 
reasons why Jesus passed through all this suf- 
fering : one was because he was bearing the 



THE WOISTDERFUL NAME. 



87 



punishment of our sins ; the other was to 
prove to us how wonderful his love for us is. 
There is nothing that has such power over 
our hearts as love. And the thought of one 
who really loves us, suffering for our good, — 
oh, who can resist this ? Let me tell you of a 
poor drunkard, who was saved from ruin by the 
love of a dear daughter in suffering for him. 

This man's name was Lee. His intemper- 
ance had broken his poor wife's heart. Be- 
fore she died Mrs. Lee told her only daugh- 
ter, Millie, never to leave her father, but to 
be patient and kind, and try to win him 
back from his sinful ways. After her 
mother's death her father treated her with 
the greatest cruelty. He would swear at 
her, and beat her, and sometimes tm^n her 
out of the house at night. But she never 
left him. 

One night, about eleven o'clock, a neighbor 
was going home. As he passed their door 
he saw something on the step. He drew 
near, and found it was Millie. She was wet 
to the skin ; for it was late in the autumn, 



88 



BIBLE WONDEKS* 



and a cold rain was falling. Her father had 
driven her out some time before ; she had sat 
down on the step to listen for the heavy 
snoring of his drunken slumbers, that she 
might creep back to her bed. But before she 
heard it she had fallen into a troubled sleep, 
and the rain-drops were pattering upon her. 
The kind-hearted neighbor took hold of her, 
and tried to persuade her to go home with 
him. But she struggled away from him, and 
went back to the dark and cheerless cottage. 
She wouldn't leave her father. Things 
went on so for weeks and months. At 
length her father grew less violent to his 
self-denying child. One day he awoke from 
sleep, after he had been drinking. He 
found her preparing his breakfast, and sing- 
ing a simple little song. He turned to her, 
with a tone almost tender, and said, 
" Millie, what makes you stay with me ? " 

" Because you are my father, and I love 
you," said Millie. 

" You love me ! " repeated the wretched 
man, " you love me ! " He looked at his 



THE WONDEEFUL NAME. 



89 



bloated limbs, his soiled and ragged clothes. 
"Love me!" he still murmured. "Millie, 
what makes you love me ? I am only a poor, 
miserable drunkard. Everybody else de- 
spises me ; why don't you ? " 

"Dear father," said Millie, as her eyes 
filled with tears, "my mother taught me to 
love you ; and every night it seems, in my 
dreams, as if she comes from heaven, and 
stands by my little bed, and says, Millie, don't 
leave your father. He'll get away from the 
power of drink some of these days ; and then, 
when you win him back from his evil ways, 
how happy you will be ! " 

Even the poor drunkard's heart couldn't 
stand against such love as this. He took 
her up in his arms, and wept over her like a 
child. That was the turning point in his 
history. From that day he became a tem- 
perate man. 

And so Jesus suffered for us, to show his 
wonderful love ; and that by the power of 
that love he may lead us to turn from our 
sins, and love and serve him. When the 



90 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



gospel is preached to people, they begin, after 
a while, to find out what it means. They see 
it was his love to them which brought Jesus 
down from heaven ; it was his love to them, 
and not the nails of the Eoman soldiers, 
which fastened him to the cross. And then 
their hearts begin to melt. And the more 
they think of his wonderful love, the more 
sorry they feel for their sins, and the more 
they desire to love him, and try to do what 
will please him. 

Let me mention one other illustration of 
the wonderful love of Jesus, as shown in 
what he suffered for us. 

Some years ago, a Russian nobleman was 
travelling on special business, in the interior 
of Eussia. It was the beginning of winter, 
but the frost had set in early. The carriage 
stopped at an inn, and he asked for a fresh 
supply of horses, to carry him on to the next 
station, where he intended to spend the night. 
The innkeeper begged him not to go on, for 
there was danger in travelling so late, be- 
cause the wolves were out. But the nobleman 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 



91 



thought that he only said this in order to get 
him to stay with him all night. He said it 
was too early for the wolves, and ordered the 
fresh team of four horses to be put to the 
carriage. Then he drove off, with his wife 
and his little daughter inside the carriage 
with him. 

On the box of the carriage, by the side of 
the driver, was a servant who had been born 
in the nobleman's family, to whom he was 
much attached, and who loved his master as 
he loved his own life. They rolled along 
over the hardened snow, and there seemed 
no sim of dano^er. The moon was sheddino; 
its pale, soft light, and the road, over which 
they were going, sparkled like silver. At 
length the little girl said, "Father, what 
was that strange howling sound that I just 
heard ? " " Oh, nothing but the wind sighing 
through the trees," said her father. The 
child shut her eyes, and was quiet ; but soon 
she said again, " Listen, father, it is not 
like the wind, I think." Her father lis- 
tened, and far, far away in the dis- 



92 



BIBLE WOOT)ERS. 



tance behind him, through the clear, cold, 
frosty air, he heard a sound, the meaning of 
which he knew too well. 

Then he put down the window, and said 
to his servant, "The wolves are after us; 
make haste. Tell the man to drive faster, 
and get your pistols ready." The postilion 
drove faster. The horses were galloping at 
the top of their speed ; but the dreadful 
sounds which the child had heard came 
nearer and nearer. It was quite clear now 
that a large pack of hungry wolves had 
scented them out, and was in full chase after 
them. The nobleman tried to calm the fears 
of his wife and child. 

At last the baying of the pack was 
distinctly heard. So he said to the ser- 
vant, " T\Tien they come up with us, you 
single out one, and fire, and I will single out 
another; and while the rest are devouring 
them we can get on." As soon as he put 
down the window, he saw the pack in full 
cry behind, with a great dog-wolf at their 
head. Two shots were fired, and two of the 



THE WOISTDERFUL NAME. 



93 



wolves fell. The others mstantly fell upon 
them, and greedily devoured them. In the 
mean time the carriage gained ground. But 
the taste of blood only made the savage 
beasts more furious, and they were soon up 
with the carriao'e arain. Ao:ain two more 
shots were fired, and two more wolves fell, 
and were devom-ed. But ao^ain the carriao^e 
was soon overtaken, and the station-house was 
still far distant. The nobleman then ordered 
the driver to loose one of the leading horses, 
that they might gain time while the wolves 
were eating him. He did so. The poor 
horse rushed madly away into the forest, and 
the wolves after him. He was soon caught, 
and torn in pieces, and the wolves were after 
the carriage again. Another horse was sent 
off, and devoured like the first, and the 
wolves were coming up again. The carriage 
went on as fast as it could with the two re- 
maining horses ; but still the stopping-place 
was a good way off. 

At last the servant said to his master, 
" I have served you ever since I was a child ; 



94 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



I love you as my own self. Nothing can 
save you now but one thing. Let me save 
you. I ask you only to look after my wife 
and little ones." 

Then, before the nobleman had time to 
prevent him, he jumped off the box into the 
midst of the bloodthirsty wolves. The two 
panting horses galloped on with the car- 
riage, and got into the station-house just as 
the terrible pack were coming up to make 
their last attack. But the travellers were 
safe. 

What a good illustration this is of the 
wonderful love of Jesus ! We were lost in 
the wilderness of sin. Satan and his wicked 
spmts, like roaring lions and ravenous 
beasts, were rushing after us to destroy us. 
There was none to help, and none to save, 
when Jesus appeared. He threw himself 
into the midst of our fierce pursuers. He 
let himself be torn in pieces by them, in 
order that we might be saved. And it is in- 
teresting to know that in the twenty-second 
Psalm, which describes his sufferings on the 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 



95 



cross, Jesus speaks of himself as being sur- 
rounded by savage beasts. He speaks of 
wild bulls, of dogs or wolves, of lions and 
unicorns all gathering round to toss, and 
tear, and devour him. He was left alone in 
the midst of them. His friends left him. 
His disciples left him. The angels left him. 
His Father left him. How fearful it must 
have been ! But it was necessary for our 
salvation that he should be thus left. And 
his love for us made him loilling to be thus 
left. He need not have been so left unless 
he had chosen to have it so. He did it 
voluntarily. His love led him to do it. 
How amazing that love is ! How well the 
prophet might say of him : " His name 
shall be called Wonderfid.^' 

We have spoken now of two things which 
show how wonderful his name is : one is its 
many meanings; the other is, the love con- 
nected ivith it. 

We have said that the Bible is a wonder- 
ful book. And when we open it we find that 
the greatest wonder in it is Jesus. His 



96 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



name is Wonderful. It is wonderful for its 
many meanings, and wonderful for its love. 
We read, in the New Testament, that when 
Jesus was brought before Pilate, the Roman 
governor, to be tried, Pilate asked this ques- 
tion, "What shall I do with Jesus?" That 
was a very solemn question. You have 
heard about him again to-day. Now, I want 
each of you to ask this question. What shall 
/ do with Jesus? There are two things we 
ought to do with Jesus. One is this : we 
ought to take him for our Saviour. Sup- 
pose you are hungry, and somebody brings 
you bread ; what ought you to do with it ? 
Eat it. Suppose you are thirsty, and some- 
body brings you a cup of nice cold water ; 
what ought you to do with it? Drink it. 
Suppose you are sick, and somebody brings 
you medicine that will cure you ; what ought 
you to do with it ? Take it. Suppose you 
are almost naked, and somebody brings you 
a good suit of clothes ; what ought you to do 
with them? Put them on, and wear them. 
Yes ; and when a poor lost sinner hears of 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 



97 



Jesus, the Saviour, whose name is Wonder- 
ful, he ought at once to take him for his 
Saviour. This means he should give his 
heart to Jesus ; and trust his soul to him to 
save it. And when you have taken Jesus for 
your Saviour, there is another thing you 
ought to do with him. You ought to try to 
get others to take him for their Saviour. 
We can do this by setting a good ex- 
ample at home. If those who know us see 
that serving Jesus makes us good and happy, 
they will want to serve him too. We can 
do it by trying to bring into the Sunday 
school those who don't go to it. And we 
can do it by trying to send the gospel to 
those who don't know anything about Jesus. 
These are the things we ought to do with 
that blessed Saviour, of whom Isaiah said : — 

"His name shall be called Wonderful." 
7 



IT. 



Isaiah ix. 6. 



ttmne sl^all ht mlleb McubjerftiL*' xx. 0. 

We have spoken of two reasons on 
account of which the name of Jesus may 
well be called Wonderful. It is wonderful 
for its many meanings; and it is wonderful 
for the love connected with it. 

There is another reason for which the 
name of Jesus is wonderful ; and this is the 
blessings which it brings. These are all 
wonderful. We will only speak now of 
tliree great blessings which Jesus brings to 
us, and on account of which his name may 
well be called Wonderful. 

The first of these three blessings which 
Jesus brings to us is A wonderful deliv- 
erance. 

The coast of England is very rocky in 
some parts ; and when storms beat in upon 
it, as they often do, it is very dangerous. 

101 



102 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



Many fearful weeks take place, and great 
numbers of lives are lost, in this way, every 
year. Life-boats are kept along the coast, 
at certain distances, in the charge of men 
called "wreckers," whose duty it is, when 
vessels are in danger during a storm, to man 
the life-boat, and go out and try to help 
and save poor shipwrecked sailors. 

One night, some years ago, a terrible 
storm was rasrino' alono' the Enoiish coast. 
The sea was lashed into foam and fury by 
the fierce wind that was blowino-. The bio^ 
waves came roUino' in, and breakino; in 
thunder on the shore. Towards morning, 
a gun was heard by the wreckers on shore. 
They knew it was a signal of distress from 
some ship that was in danger. As soon as 
it was light, they saw the vessel from which 
the gun had been fired. It was aground on 
a shoal, or sand-bank, far off from the 
shore. The sea was dashing furiously over 
it. The men were waving their hands, and 
makino^ sims to those on shore to come and 
save them. Any one could see that the ves- 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 103 



sel would soon be broken to pieces, and all 
on board be lost, unless something was done 
to save them. The wreckers, on shore, got 
their life-boat out ; but, when they came to 
launch it, they found the' wind blowing so 
tremendously, and the sea so frightfully 
rough, that they gave it up. They said it 
was impossible for a boat to live in such a 
sea; and, that if they attempted to go, they 
would all be lost before they could reach 
the ship. Still, there were the poor sailors. 
The people on shore could see the signals 
they were making ; and, occasionally, the 
heart-rending cries of their distress would 
come borne upon the wind. The chief 
wrecker had an only daughter, a young girl 
about sixteen or seventeen years old. But, 
though only a girl, she had a strong arm 
and a brave heart. She couldn't bear to 
think that those poor sailors should perish 
without an effort to save them. She urged 
the men to go ; she seized an oar, and said 
she would go herself, if any one would go 
with her. This was too much for the men. 



104 



BIBLE WOISTDEES. 



They could not think of being outdone by a 
girl. They launched the boat and manned 
it. That noble-hearted girl went with them. 
It was a most dangerous undertaking ; but, 
in spite of the danger, they kept on trying. 
They reached the wreck, and saved the lives 
of all on board. That was a wonderful 
deliverance. Almost everybody has heard 
of that brave girl. Her name was Grace 
Darling. The Queen of England was so 
delighted, when she heard the story of what 
this noble girl had done, that she wrote her 
a letter, with her own hand, thanking her 
for her courage in saving the lives of the 
poor shipwrecked sailors. And all the 
world has united with the good queen in ad- 
miring and praising Grace Darling's bravery. 

And this is a good illustration of the won- 
derful deliverance which Jesus has brought 
to us. Sin had swept over our world like a 
storm at sea, and had made a wreck of it. 
All the people in the world were left like 
sailors on a wreck, which the sea was break- 
ing to pieces. They were all in danger of 



^THE WONDERFUL- NAME7 



105 



being washed off the wreck, and of perish- 
ing in the deep waters. And we must all 
have perished in this way unless deliverance 
had been brought to us. But who could 
bring that deliverance? Where was it to 
come from? All the people in the world 
were in the same danger. They were all 
clinging to the same wreck. They could 
not help each other. The angels in heaven 
could look on and pity us, but they could 
neither save us, nor help us. Jesus was the 
only one who could do anything for us. 
And even he could do nothing until he con- 
sented to die for us. But he was willing 
to do this. He became a man. He suffered 
death upon the cross for us. And then he 
made a life-boat out of his cross. He keeps 
this life-boat sailing round the wreck all the 
time, and he tells his servants to keep call- 
ing, to those who are perishing, to quit the 
wreck and come on board the life-boat and 
be saved. Millions have been saved in this 
way, and millions more may be saved if they 
will. This life-boat never can be too full. 



106 



BIBLE WOKDERS. 



It never can be upset or sunk. It is able 
to save unto the uttermost " all who will get 
mto it in the right way. Now this is a won- 
derful deliverance. This is the deliverance 
which Jesus brought to us ; and, because he 
brought it, it may well be said of him that 
" his name shall be called Wonderful." 

But let us take another illustration of this 
wonderful deliverance. This story is taken 
from Grecia.n history, in very old times, — 
the fabulous times as they are called. We 
cannot believe that the story is true ; but we 
give it here, just as the history gives it, and 
whether true or false, it answers just as well 
for an illustration. 

In the Mediterranean Sea there is an island 
called Crete. It is the same where the 
brave Greeks were lately fighting for their 
liberty against the Turks. In ancient times, 
there was a king named Minos, who ruled 
over this island. On one occasion, the son 
of this King Llinos, a fine young man, was 
killed by the people of Athens, then one of 
the most celebrated cities of Greece. This 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 107 



made Minos very angry. He declared war 
against the Athenians. They fought a bat- 
tle. He beat them and gained a great vic- 
tory over them. The Athenians begged 
Minos to make peace with them on any 
terms he chose to offer. He agreed to make 
peace with them on this condition : that the 
Athenians should send him, every year, 
seven young men and seven young women, 
chosen by lot from their best families. 

They agreed to this because they were so 
badly beaten, and because they had no idea 
what he was going to do with these young 
people. But what he wanted them for was 
this. He had a large garden, called a laby- 
rinth. It was enclosed with great high 
walls. The paths in this garden were so 
winding, so zigzag, and made to cross one 
another so often, that it was impossible for 
any person who once got in ever to find his 
way out again, unless he knew the secret of 
the place, which nobody knew, except Minos 
and his family. In the middle of this laby- 
rinth, the story says that Minos kept a hor- 



108 



BIBLE WONDERS, 



rible monster of a beast. It had the body 
of a man, with the head and horns of a huge, 
savage, wild bull. It was strong as a giant, 
fierce as a lion, and very fond of eating 
human flesh. And here you see the reason 
why I said I did not believe this story; 
because God never made such a monster as 
this, and no one else ever could make it. 
This horrible creature was called the mino- 
taur. That means the bull of Minos. Well, 
Minos made the bargain with the Athenians, 
just spoken of, that he might feed this mon- 
ster with the bodies of the young Athenian 
men and women. One by one they were put 
into the labyi^inth, and left to wander about, 
till the minotaur met them. As soon as he 
saw them he would run at them in his rage, 
toss them on his horns, and then eat them 
up. When this was known at Athens, it 
caused great distress. And when, from 
year to year, the time came to choose out 
the fourteen persons, who were to go and 
meet this terrible death, the whole city was 
plunged into sorrow and mourning. We 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 109 



know how we should feel, if, every year, 
fourteen persons had to be selected from 
among us for this terrible sacrifice. Sup- 
pose your brother, or sister, should prove to 
be one of the number, and there was no 
escape, how would you feel? 

The King of Athens had a son, a brave 
young man, whose name was Theseus. He 
had been living away from home for several 
years. He came back when he was of age. 
Just at the time when he returned they were 
about casting lots for the fourteen persons 
who were to go to Crete and be eaten by 
that terrible minotaur. Theseus had never 
heard of this before. He was greatly 
grieved at the distress of his countrymen on 
account of this cruelty of King Minos. He 
made up his mmd to try and deliver them 
from it. He asked to be permitted to take 
the place of one of the young men who had 
been chosen to go to Crete. His father and 
friends tried to persuade him not to go ; but 
he said, "No ; I must do what I can to rid 
my country of this great curse." So he set 



110 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



sail, with the other six young men and the 
seven maidens, for Crete. 

When the party arrived, and appeared 
before Minos, he asked Theseus who he was. 
Theseus told him, boldly and frankly, that 
he was the son of the King of Athens ; that 
he had come of his own choice, and that 
he intended to try and kill the monster, 
and deliver his country from this terrible 
plague. King Minos laughed when he 
heard this, and said to his soldiers, "Throw 
this fine fellow in first to the minotaur, in 
the morning, and let him make a meal of 
him." 

Theseus was locked up in prison waiting 
for the morning. Now it happened that 
King Minos had a daughter named Ariadne. 
She had met with Theseus, and felt inter- 
ested in him. She got the keys of the 
prison, and went to him at night, and gave 
him a sword which would cut through every- 
thing. She also gave him a ball of thread, 
or twine, and told him to fasten one end of 
it near the entrance of the labyrinth, inside, 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 



Ill 



and keep the ball in his left hand, that it 
might unwind as he went on. 

In the morning, Theseus was dragged out 
of the prison, and thrust into the labyrinth. 
He fastened the thread, as Ariadne had told 
him. Then he went on along the path 
before him. Soon after, he heard the dread- 
ful monster, bellowing, and searching for his 
prey. They met. The minotaur, as usual, 
coming on with great fury, his eyes gleam- 
ing like fire, and his mouth sending out 
smoke, rushed forward to toss his victim on 
his horns. Theseus stood calmly eying 
him, and, as he plunged onward, aimed a 
blow at him with his sword. He struck the 
monster right on the top of the head, and 
split him nearly in two, so that he fell dead 
on the spot. That was a great deliverance 
to the people of Athens, and caused great 
joy there. 

And this is a good illustration of the won- 
derful deliverance Jesus has obtained for us. 
Sin has made our world like that labyr \th 
at Crete. The paths in it are so win? 



112 



BIBLE WOXDERS. 



and crooked that we never can find our way 
out. And, in the midst of it, there is a 
monster, worse than that fabled one of 
Crete, — it is Satan, the old serpent, the 
dragon, the "roaring lion, that goeth about 
seeking whom he may devour." Only fom^- 
teen people, from the city of Athens, were 
devoured every year, by the minotaur of 
Crete ; but all the people in the world would 
have been devoured by Satan, — the monster 
that sin has let loose on our world, — if 
Jesus had not come to our deliverance. 
The minotaur of Crete could only destroy 
the bodies of men ; but Satan destroys the 
souls of people, as well as their bodies. 
Theseus obtained deliverance for the Athe- 
nians without having to suffer himself. But 
Jesus had both to suffer and to die before 
he could deliver us from the power of Satan. 
This is a wonderful deliverance indeed. 
The first blessing that Jesus has obtained for 
us is a ivonderful deliverance. 

The second, blessing that Jesus has obtained 

for us is WONDERFUL LIGHT. 



THE WONDERFUI. NAME. 113 

Suppose that a dark cloud, as black as 
pitch, were spread over the sky all round 
the world. Day and night it remains 
through the whole year. No bright sun- 
shine ever gets through it, and very little 
light. How dreadful it would be ! The 
trees, and plants, and flowers, and grass, 
would all die. The great thing that we 
should all desire, above everything else, 
would be to get those clouds driven away, 
so that we might enjoy the light and the 
sunshine again. And if an angel from 
heaven should come down, and roll those 
dark clouds away, and let us see the beauti- 
ful blue sky, and feel the warm beams of the 
sun once more, what a deliverance that 
would be for us, and how glad it would 
make us ! 

But this is very much like what Jesus has 
done for oiu: souls, though not for om^ 
bodies. Sin has brought just such a cloud 
between our souls and God. The Bible 
speaks of it as a dark, " thick cloud." It 
shuts out the light of God's face, and the 

8 



114 



BIBLE WOKDERS. 



sunshine of his favor from smiling upon us. 
This is what the Bible means when it tells us 
that " darkness covers the earth, and g7^oss 
darkness the people." It means darkness 
not in the outside world, which we see vvith 
our bodily eyes, but in the inside world to 
which our souls belong. In that world, the 
Bible tells us that people are sitting " in 
darkness, and the shadow of death." That 
dark and dreadful shadow is caused by the 
cloud which sin has brought upon our souls. 
But Jesus has come to "blot out " this dark 
cloud. ^^Hien we learn to know and love 
him, he takes it all away, and pours light and 
sunshine into the soul. And it is a blessed 
light which Jesus gives. It can shine right 
down into our hearts, and make us glad, 
when we have nothing else in the world to 
be glad for. Let me tell you about a little 
girl who was made glad by this light. 

This little girl was walking along a lane 
in the country ouo day. She seemed very 
sad, and sorrowful, and as she went on, with 
a downcast look, she said to herself, 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 



115 



" Well, I don't know as I was made for any- 
thing ; " and she drew her sun-bonnet over 
her face, and the tears trickled down her 
cheeks, like an April shower. 

" Mother says I'm always in the way," she 
continued, talking to herself, " and Willie 
scolds me all the clay ; maybe I wasn't made 
for anything. I don't see what I was put 
into the world for then. I wish I never had 
been ! " and then she sat down on a mossy 
bank by the side of the road. 

The birds were singing round her ; the 
grasshoppers chirping in the grass ; the 
flowers shedding sweet perfume in the air; 
the little brook trickling over the stones ; all 
seemed to be doing something, to be made 
for something, except herself, she thought. 

Poor little girl! she had a sad home, in 
that old hut with a drunken mother, and an 
unkind brother. The more she tried to 
please them, the more they complained of 
her, till on that bright moi*ning, when every 
little girl ought to have been happy, she had 
taken her old sun-bonnet, and wandered 



116 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



away, feeling so sad and miserable that she 
didn't care what became of her, or even if 
she never went back to her home again. 
Now, surely, it was a very dark cloud that was 
spread out over all the inside world of that 
little girl. And any light that could break 
that cloud, and let the bright simshine in 
upon her soul would be a wonderful light. 
Let me tell you how this was clone. 

She was leaning her head on a patch of 
nice soft moss, and saying in a low, sorrow- 
ful voice, "The birds and everything were 
made for something ; why wasn't I ? JsT o ; I 
wasn't made for an}i:hing." 

Just then, a kind Christian lady was pass- 
ing by, and heard what she said. The sad 
tone of the little girl's voice made her feel 
sorry for her ; and, bending over her, she 
said gently : — 

"Yes, my little one, you were made for 
something. You were made to be a little 
angel in heaven by and by." 

The little girl turned her sad face towards 
her, as if doubting what she had heard, and 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 117 

said, "Mother says I wasn't made for any- 
thing." 

" But you are," said the lady ; " you are 
made to be an angel in heaven." 

"But where is heaven? Can I go there 
now?" asked the little girl. 

And then the lady told her about heaven, 
and how Jesus left his throne of glory, and 
came down upon earth, and took little chil- 
dren in his arms, and blessed them ; and how 
he died a cruel death that they might go to 
heaven, and be as good, and as beautiful, 
and as happy as the angels. 

And the little girl dried her tears and 
smiled. Her mother had never told her 
about God, or heaven. It was the first 
time she had ever heard of Jesus. The 
thought of heaven made her forget her 
home. 

"And can I be an angel too? Oh, how I 
would love to be one, and to see Jesus ! " she 
said. 

Then the lady told her she could, if she 
would love Jesus ; and she gave her a nice 



118 



BIBLE WONDEKS. 



Httle book which told her about heaven, and 
how she might get there ; and the poor child 
went home feeling very happy, because she 
felt that she was made for something. 
When she left home that morning, there was 
a dark cloud on her soul. There was no 
light, or sunshine there, and that was the 
reason why she felt so unhappy. But Jesus 
had come to her and blotted out that cloud, 
and caused the light, which he gives, to shine 
right down into the soul of that little girl. 
What a wonderful light it is which Jesus 
gives, that could make a poor little girl like 
this happy, even in the miserable home of a 
drunken mother ! 

We have seen how this light could make 
a little girl happy while she was living ; now 
let me show you how it could make a little 
boy happy when he was dying. 

A lady had a class of young boys in a 
Sunday school. After the lesson was over, 
one day, she laid her hand on the head of 
one of her scholars, and said : — 

" Are you afraid to die, Johnny?" 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 119 

"Yes," he said, sadly. 
"Why, my child?" 

" O teacher," said he, in a low voice, " be- 
cause it seems, somehow like going into a 
strange house ^ in the nighty without any light 

"And yet, Johnny," she said, "there have 
been people who were not afraid of death, but 
were glad and thankful to leave the world. 
Do you understand how it could be ? " 

He looked perplexed, and shook his head. 
Then she tried to explain it to him. She 
told him of the times of the martyrs, when 
strong men, and delicate women, and even 
tender children, were tortm^ed, and burnt, 
and devoured by wild beasts, and met death 
in those dreadful forms, not only willingly, 
but gladly, yea, joyfully, because of the love 
they had for Jesus, and of the light which he 
caused to shine into their souls. Just as this 
teacher finished speaking to Johnny, the bell 
rang to close the school. This was in the 
summer time, just before vacation. She 
said "Good-by" to her scholars, and went 
into the country. 



120 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



T\Tien she came back it was autumn. 
One day, soon after her return, " a note was 
brought to me," said the teacher, "from 
Johnny's mother. She said her dear boy 
was very ill, and wanted to see his teacher. 
As soon as I possibly could I went to the 
house of his parents. As I entered the room 
I saw a sight which I shall never forget. 
The dear boy was lying in the arms of his 
father. His mother sat by sobbing, and 
holding the hand of the djdng child in her 
hand. When I looked at Johnny's face, oh, 
how different it seemed from what it was 
when I had last seen it ! All the sadness 
and fear which it then expressed were gone. 
He didn't look now like one who felt as if 
he were going, ^ into a strange house^ at nighty 
without any light, His face looked as 
bright as if there was a sun shining in his 
soul. As soon as his loving eyes met mine^ 
he cried out, am not afraid to die, now^ 
dear teacher ; Jesus, who was with the mar- 
tyrs, is right here,' — laying his hand on his 
heart, — ^ and he makes it all lightJ^ I 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 121 



stooped to kiss his brow^ but could not 
speak a word. 

" ' Sing, father,' said he ; ' sing " There is a 
fountain filled with blood.'" 

" The father tried to do what the dear dying 
boy wished for, but his strong voice failed 
him, and he had to stop. Then his mother 
took it up, and managed to get through the 
first verse alone. In the second verse her 
husband joined her. They sang the hymn 
through. While singing the last verse they 
closed their eyes. You know the words : — 

" ' Then, in a nobler, sweeter song, 
I'll sing thy power to save. 
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue 
Lies silent in the grave.' 

"As they opened their eyes, on finishing 
this verse, they saw that Johnny's bosom 
was no longer heaving. He had ceased to 
breathe. While they were singing that last 
verse his gentle spirit had passed away. A 
sweet smile was still lingering on his face. 
There was light on Johnny's face. There 
was light in Johnny's soul. There was light 



122 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



on the path along which the angels bore him. 
And, oh, there was light in that blessed 
home to which they carried him ! In John- 
ny's own words : ^ Jesus ivas there, and it was 
all light: " 

The second blessing that Jesus has ob- 
tained for us is iDonderful light. 

The only other blessing, that we shall now 
speak of, which Jesus brings, is a wojS^derful 

EEMEDY. 

We have not much time to spare for this 
third blessing, but we must say something 
about it. We are speaking about a remedy. 
What is a remedy ? A remedy is something 
that cures. K a man has the cholera, and 
sends to the physician for a remedy, what does 
he mean by a remedy ? Something to cure 
him. Now the remedy that Jesus brings is 
wonderful for its power to cure. It cures all 
diseases. Did you ever hear of a medicine 
that could cure everything that was wrong 
about the body? No. Suppose you have 
the headache to-day. You get some med- 
icine to cure it. To-morrow you have the 



THE WONDERFUL NAME. 123 

toothache. Would you take the same med- 
icine for the toothache that cured the 
headache? No. You would need something 
different. The next day you have the ear- 
ache. Would you take the same medicine 
for that, that cured the toothache? No. 
You would need something different for each 
of those complaints. If we had one medicine 
that would cure all the diseases of the body, 
that would be a wonderful remedy. But 
there never was such a remedy for the body, 
and there never will be. 

Yet this is just the kind of remedy that 
Jesus brings to us for our souls. This rem- 
edy is the grace of God, You know the 
Bible compares sin to a disease. It is the dis- 
ease of the soul. And as disease in the body 
takes a great many different forms, so does 
the disease of sin in the soul. But whatever 
it be, the grace of God, which Jesus brings, 
is a remedy for it, and will cure it. With 
one person the principal disease of the soul 
is anger. Well, the remedy of Jesus will 
cure this. With another it is pride. The 



124 



BIBLE WOjSnDERS. 



remedy of Jesus will cure this. With an- 
other it is selfishness ; but the remedy of 
Jesus will cure this. And so no matter what 
the disease of any one's soul may be, the 
remedy of Jesus will cure it. It is a won- 
derful remedy, because it cures all diseases. 

And then it is a wonderful remedy again, 
because it cures in all places. In different 
countries people have to get different reme- 
dies to cure the same disease of the body. 
^"^Tien that dreadful disease, the cholera, was 
going round the world, the same remedy 
that cured it in one nation would not always 
cure it in another. But the remedy which 
Jesus brings us, for our souls, will cure them 
just the same everywhere. It cures the 
Greenlander, amidst the ice and snow of the 
frozen north ; and it cures the Hottentot, just 
as well, on the burning plains of the south. 
In the city, and in the country, in the pal- 
aces of kings, and in the huts of peasants, it 
has the same power to cure. It is indeed a 
wonderful remedy because it cures in all 
places. 



THE WONDESEUL NAME. 125 

And then it is a wonderful remedy again, 
because it cures at all times, I mean by this 
that it never grov/s old or loses its power to 
cure. In this respect it is very different 
from the medicines we use for the body. 
Suppose your little sister was taken sick with 
the scarlet fever. And suppose that your 
mother should find, on one of the shelves of 
the medicine closet, a bottle of medicine 
which had a printed label on it, on which 
were these words : — 

Cure fok the Scarlet Fever, 
1768. 

A bottle of scarlet fever medicine a hundred 
years old ! Do you think the doctor would 
let your mother give that medicine to the 
sick child? No, certainly not. He would 
say, " Throw it away. It is spoiled. It has 
lost its power. It is good for nothing." But 
the remedy which Jesus brings for our souls 
never grows old, and never spoils. It is just 
as good now as it was when Jesus was on 
earth, nearly two thousand years ago. There 



126 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



is one verse of that beautiful hymn, which 
little Johnny's parents were singing as he 
lay dying, which tells us the truth about 
this wonderful remedy, very sweetly. It 
says : — 

" Dear, dying Lamb! thy precious blood 
Shall never lose its power, 
Till all the ransomed church of Grod 
Are saved, to sin no more." 

A wonderful remedy, indeed, it is which 
Jesus brings. We have seen that it is won- 
derful for three reasons : because it cures all 
diseases — in all places — at all times. 

The name of Jesus may well be called 
wonderful on account of the blessings that 
he brings. These are all wonderful. We 
have spoken of three of these wonderful 
blessings. What was the first? A wonderful 
deliverance. What was the second? Won- 
derful light. And what was the third ? A 
wonderful remedy. 

Now, my dear children, these wonderful 
blessings that Jesus brings are the very 
things that we need, above all things. We 



THE WONDERFUC NAME. 127 



not only never can be happy, but we never 
can be good for anything till we get them. 
See, here is a watch. What was this watch 
made for? To keep time. But suppose the 
main-spring is broken, so that it can't keep 
time ; what is it good for ? Good for nothing. 
Here is a pencil. What is a pencil made 
for? To write with. But suppose there is 
no lead in it, so that it won't write ; what is 
it good for? Good for nothing. Here is 
a pen-knife. What is a knife made for? 
To cut with. But suppose the blade is 
broken out, so that you can't cut with it; 
what is it good for? Good for nothing. 
And what are we made for? To love and 
serve God. But till we come to Jesus and 
get the wonderful blessings that he brings, 
we can't love and serve God. And if we 
don't do this, what are we good for? Good 
for nothing. Yes, this is true of us all 
till we come to Jesus and ask him to give us 
grace to love and serve him. Now, if you 
had a watch that was good for nothing, be- 
cause the main-spring vfas broken and it 



128 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



wouldn't keep time, what would you do 
■v\ith it? Take it to the maker, and ask him 
to put a new main-spring in it. If you had 
a knife that was good for nothing because 
the blade was broken out, and it wouldn't 
cut, what would you do with it? Take it to 
the maker, and ask him to put a new blade in 
it. And if we are good for nothing, because 
we have wicked hearts, so that we cannot 
love and serve Jesus, what are we to do? 
Why, bring our hearts to Jesus that he may 
change them and make them new. We 
should take up the prayer which David 
offered, and say each one for himself, " Create 
in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a 
right spirit within me ! " If we offer that 
prayer with all our hearts, Jesus will hear 
and answer it. And then, when our hearts 
are made new, and we learn to love and 
serve him, we shall understand how truly 
his name is called lYonderful, because of the 
wonderful blessings that he brings. These 
blessings are a iconderfal deliverance^ a won- 
derful light, and a ivonderful remedy. 



y. 

semts." 

Dan. ii. 28. 



V. 



Sr^m is H (Sob in l^eaben t^at rcteUtl^ utcxzUJ' — ©an. ii. 2S. 

These words were spoken by the prophet 
Daniel. He was then in Babylon. The 
King of Babylon at that time was named 
Nebuchadnezzar. He had just had a re- 
markable dream. It made a great impres- 
sion on his mind at the time it took place ; 
but, when he awoke in the morning, strange 
to say, it had all passed away from him. 
He could not remember any part of it. He 
knew it was something very important, and 
yet, if his life had depended on it, he couldn't 
tell what it was. This troubled him very 
much. To help him out of his difficult}^ he 
called the wise men of Babylon together. 
That city was famous for its wise men. 
These were men who spent their time in 
studying all about the stars, and trying to 

131 



132 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



find out a great many things which other 
people didn't understand. 

As soon as the wise men came to the 
palace, the king told them he had had a 
dream in the night which troubled him very 
much ; but he had forgotten what it was ; 
and now he wanted them to find out what 
the dream was, and tell him what it meant. 
The wise men were very much astonished 
that the king should ask such a thing as this 
of them. They said if he would only tell 
them the dream they would soon find out its 
meaning; but that he was asking a very 
unreasonable thing, and a thing that nobody 
in the world could do when he expected 
them to find out his secret thoughts in the 
past night, when even he himself could not 
tell what they had been. This was very 
unreasonable. Yet the king wouldn't listen 
to them. He became very angry. He said 
they must tell him, or else he would have 
them all killed as a parcel of cheats. They 
said it was impossible for them to tell him 
what he wanted to know. Then he ordered 



GOD REYEALETH SECRETS. 133 

the captain of his body guard to put all the 
wise men to death. 

Now the prophet Daniel belonged to the 
company of these wise men. As soon as he 
heard of the cruel order, which the king had 
issued, he went to the officer and told him 
to go in, and ask the king to give them a 
little time, and he would find out all about 
the dream, and its meaning too. So the 
order for killing the wise men was stopped. 

Then Daniel got some of his friends to 
join with him in earnest prayer to God, 
that he would show him what the dream 
was, and what its meaning was also. God 
heard their prayers, and came to Daniel in 
a dream, that same night, and told him all 
about it. Daniel was very glad ; and, in 
the morning, he came in before the king, 
and told him both the dream, which he had 
forgotten, and the meaning of it. 

But Daniel didn't try to take the credit 
of it to himself. He was very careful to 
tell the king that it was not by any wisdom 
of his own that he had found it out. He 



134 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



stood before the king, and said, " There is a 
God in heaven who revealeth secrets ; and 
it is he who has made the forgotten dream 
and its meaning known to me." 

And this brings before ns another Bible 
wonder. It is the ivonderfal Revealer of 
secrets. A revealer is one who makes 
things known. A secret is something which 
is either not known at all, or is known only 
to a few. For instance, suppose you should 
ask me whether any persons live in the 
moon, or in the stars ; and if so, what sort 
of houses they live in, what sort of clothes 
they wear, or what sort of food they eat? 
I could not tell you. That is a secret which 
nobody in the world knows. God knows 
all about it ; and he could reveal this secret, 
if he saw fit. But he has not done this. 
Here again, for example, is a young man 
and a young woman, who are engaged to be 
married. All their friends know of their 
engagement; but no time is fixed for the 
wedding. At last they make up their minds 
to be married on the evening of Christmas 



GOD REVEALETH SECEETS. 135 

day. That is a secret. At first, it is 
known only to themselves. By and by 
they tell it to some of their friends. Then 
the secret is revealed, or made known. To 
reveal a secret is to make it known. "There 
is a God in heaven who revealeth secrets," 
or makes them known. 

God has revealed a great many secrets. 
It was once a secret how the world was 
made. Nobody knew anything about it. 
But God has revealed it in the Bible. It 
was once a secret what is to become of the 
world at last. But God has revealed it in 
the Bible. He has told us there that, at 
last, the world will be burned up with fire ; 
not so as to be destroyed, like a piece of 
paper, when you burn it, but like gold, that 
is put into the fire to be made purer, and 
brighter than it was before. It was a secret 
once, how wicked men could get their sins 
pardoned, and their hearts changed; but 
God has revealed this secret and made it 
known to us. And so, we may well say 
with Daniel, "There is a God in heaven 



136 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



that revealeth secrets." A wonderful re 
vealer of secrets God is ! Our sermon 
to-day will be about the wokdeeful ee- 
YEALEE. There are a great many different 
kinds of secrets that God reveals. I am 
going to speak now of secrets of only one 
kind. These are secrets of vnckedness. 
People rob, and kill, and do a great many 
wrong things when they are alone, and they 
think their sin will remain a secret. But 
they forget that no one can ever be alone. 
The Bible tells us that "The eyes of the 
Loxd are in every place^ beholding the evil 
and the good." We may well, therefore, 
ask, in the simple, but solemn words of the 
hymn : — 

Amidst the deepest shades of night 
Can there be one who knows my way ? 

Yes; God is as a shining light, 
And turns the darkness into day. 

If I could find some cave, unknown, 
Where human foot had never trod, 

Yet there, I could not be alone ; 
On every side there would be — God." 



GOD REVEALETH SECRETS. 137 

And because God is present in every 
place, and knows all about everything that 
is done, it is very easy for him to reveal 
secrets. There are two ways in which God 
reveals, or makes known, the secrets of 
wickedness. The first of these is by con- 
science. 

This word conscience means to hnow 
together vjith. If you go alone at night, 
and steal something, you know what you 
have done, and there is another who knows 
it together with you. This other person is 
God. And God has a witness in the soul 
of every man, and woman, and child. This 
witness is conscience. Eemember that con- 
science is GocVs witness in the soul. Sup- 
pose you knew there was a person following 
you, wherever you went. You couldn't get 
away from him for a moment. Suppose he 
could hear every word you spoke, and know 
every thought that came into your mind; 
and suppose he had a note-book with him, 
and was busy all the time writing down, 
in ink that could not be rubbed out, every 



138 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



word you spoke, and every thought you 
had, — wouldn't you want to be very careful 
what you said, and what you thought: 
Well, this is just what conscience is doing. 
And this witness for God is never deaf. 
It hears all that is said. It is never blind. 
It sees all that is done. And it never for- 
gets anything it has seen and heard. 

You know that every house in which gas 
is burned, has, on a shelf, down in the cel- 
lar, an iron box, called a gas-metre. Inside 
of that box there is a little machine that 
measures all the gas burned in the house. 
And that machine has a little dial-face, like 
the face of a watch. It has fingers and 
figures on it. And it is so arranged that, as 
the gas goes on burning, there is a little 
wheel inside that keeps turning round all 
the time, and this makes the fingers move 
on the dial-face, and point to the figures, 
which tell how much gas has been burned. 
And conscience is very much like this 
machine in the gas-metre. It keeps an 
exact account of all that we do. And very 



GOD EEVEALETH SECRETS. 139 

often when a man has been doing some 
wicked thing, which no one knows abont 
but God and himself, God makes his con- 
science accuse him, and trouble him, so that 
he is obliged to confess what he has done. 
And, in this way, the " God who is in 
heaven revealeth secrets." By the con- 
sciences of men he makes known the wicked 
things they have done. 

Let me give you two or three illustrations 
of the way in which "God revealeth secrets" 
by the consciences of wicked men. 

Some years ago, there was a celebrated 
minister, named Lorenzo Dow, who used to 
go about this country preaching. He was 
a singular man, and often did things that 
seemed very strange. One Sunday, when 
travelling to a place where he had an ap- 
pointment to preach, just before arriving 
there, as he passed by a house, he heard a 
man, who was standing in the door, swear- 
ing fearfully. He stopped and asked him 
what made him swear so. The man said he 
was swearing because some of his neighbors 



140 



BIBLE WOjJa)ERS. 



had stolen an axe from his wood-shed the 
night before. Come along with me to 
meeting," said he, to the man, "and I will 
find ont who stole your axe." The man 
consented to go. When the minister got 
down from his horse, before going into the 
church, he picked up a big stone, about as 
large as one's fist. He took it with him into 
the pulpit, and laid it down beside the desk. 
He preached a sermon on the text, "Be sure 
your sin will find you out." In the midst 
of his sermon, he stopped suddenly, picked 
up the stone in his hand, and, raising it, in a 
threatening way, he said, "A man, in this 
neighborhood, had an axe stolen from him 
last night. If the person who stole it 
doesn't dodge his head. III hit him on the 
forehead ivith this stone^^^ — at the same 
time makins: a violent effort as if about to 
throw it. The thief was present, and was 
so taken by surprise, that before he had 
time to think what he was doing, he sud- 
denly dodged down his head, and was found 
out. And so the Revealer of secrets made 



GOD REVEALETH SECRETS. 141 

known that man's wickedness by means of 
his conscience. 

Let me tell you another story, to show 
how God sometimes reveals secrets, by 
means of the consciences of people, when 
they never could have been found out in any 
other way. 

A good many years ago, in a little country 
town in England, there lived a man by the 
name of John Peters. He had been a 
blacksmith ; but, an uncle having died and 
left him money enough to live on, without 
work, he had given up his trade, and had 
nothing to do but attend to a pretty large 
garden, on which he spent a great deal of 
time, and which he kept in the neatest and 
nicest condition possible. John's wife was 
a very ambitious woman. When her hus- 
band got the money which his uncle had 
left him, she wanted him, very much, to 
sell out the plain, humble cottage they had 
lived in ever since they had been married, 
and buy a handsome-looking cottage at the 
other end of the village. But John was not 



142 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



willing to do this. He said it would cost 
so much money, that they would not have 
enough left to live on, unless he opened his 
shop, and went back to his work as a black- 
smith, which he didn't want to do now, 
because, since he had had the rheumatism so 
badly, he was not able to use the smith's 
heavy hammer, as he had formerly done, 
without great pain and suffering. His wife 
said she didn't want him to go back to his 
trade again, by any means ; she would be 
ashamed to have him do that. But she did 
want to get out of that poor, shabby-looking 
cottage, where they were living. For her- 
self she didn't care if they had but one 
meal a day, provided they were only living 
in that stylish-looking cottage. For then 
they could look down upon their neighbors, 
and would have something to be proud of. 

But John was a prudent, sensible man. 
He couldn't take this view of the matter. 
He thought it would be a very foolish thing 
to feel proudy and to look down on your 
neighbors, because you might happen to live 



GOD REVEALETH SECEETS. 143 

in a little nicer house than they. And as 
for pinching themselves in food, and going 
hungry half the time, just for the 3ake of a 
little show, that was too silly to think of. 
And so they couldn't agree about it. 

Now, the right thing would have been for 
Mrs. Peters to have given up all thought or 
care about that handsome cottage, and to 
have been content with what they had. But 
she w^ouldn't do this. She fretted and 
worried about it. She often quarrelled with 
her husband about it, and made his home 
very uncomfortable. At last, the dreadful 
thought came into her mind, that if he were 
only out of the way, she could buy the cot- 
tage and do what she pleased with her hus- 
band's money. She let that thought stay. 
She made up her mind to kill her husband, 
so that she might get his money and buy the 
handsome cottage, and live in it, and look 
down on her neighbors. Then her only care 
was to do it in such a way that it would not 
be likely to be found out. 

Her husband had a large head of thick, 
6 



144 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



bushy hair. So one night she gave him 
something to make him sleep heavier than 
usual. She had prepared a long, sharp nail. 
At midnight, she took a hammer and drove 
the nail into the side of his head and killed 
him. Early in the morning, she rose and 
made a great cry and lamentation. She said 
she found her husband lying dead at her side 
when she awoke. She imitated real sorrow 
very well. And as there was no appearance 
of violence or injury about him, — the thick, 
bushy hair of his head covering up the nail, 
— nobody suspected that she had killed him. 
It was supposed to have been some sudden 
disease of the heart from which he had died. 
And so he was buried. As soon as the 
grave closed over him she thought she was 
safe ; for no one was present but herself to 
see what she had done. But she forgot 
about conscience. She forgot that "there is 
a God in heaven who revealeth secrets." 

Well, not long after her husband's death, 
she bought the handsome cottage, at the 
other end of the village. She moved into 



GOD REVEALETH SECRETS. 145 

it, and lived there. Nobody in the village 
ever thought that she had killed her hus- 
band. And how was it to be found out? 
"There is a God in heaven that revealeth 
secrets." Let me tell you how he revealed 
this. 

A good many years had passed away, and 
the sudden death of John Peters was almost 
forgotten. One summer, a gentleman had 
occasion to spend a few days in this village. 
While there he took a walk, one afternoon, 
through the graveyard. The sexton was 
digging a grave. He stood and watched 
him as he was throwing out the earth. He 
saw the bones of the dead mingled with the 
earth. Presently, a skull was thrown out. 
It rolled down the heap of earth, and stopped 
just at the stranger's feet. He picked it up 
and looked at it. He saw a rusty nail stick- 
ing through the skull. He knew, in an in- 
stant, that that nail had killed the man in 
whose skull it was found. He asked the 
sexton if he knew whose skull that was. 
"Yes, sir," said he, "it was the skull of a 

"10 



146 



BIBLE WOXDEES. 



man named John Peters, who died, very sud- 
denly, some years ago, and nobody ever 
knew the cause of his death." Then the 
sexton told him the story of John and his 
wife, and their quarrel about the cottage. 
The gentleman inquired if Mrs. Peters was 
living still. When told that she was, he 
asked the sexton to show him the way to 
her cottage ; which he did. Then he took 
out the nail, and, wrapping it up in his hand- 
kerchief, went to the cottage and knocked at 
the door. 

"Are you Mrs. Peters?" he asked of the 
person who opened it. 

" That is my name, sir," she replied. 

Then, opening his handkerchief, he said, 
as he held out the nail : — 

"Mrs. Peters, this nail was in your hus- 
band's skull ; who drove it in ? " 

She trembled. She turned pale. She 
gave a loud shriek, and fainted. They laid 
her on the bed; and when she came to, in 
great distress she confessed her crime. She 
was tried, condemned, and hung. AYhat a 



GOD REVEALETH SECRETS. 147 

secret that woman's crime was ! But, " there 
is a God in heaven, who revealeth secrets." 
He revealed this secret, or made it known, by 
the conscience of the woman. One of the 
ways in which God makes secrets known is 
hy conscience. 

Another way in which he does this is by 

PROVIDENCE. 

We often hear it said that such a thing is 
done by the providence of God. This means 
the power that God has over all things. For 
example ; here is a locomotive. It is on the 
track. The steam is up, but the engine is 
standing still. The engineer turns a crank. 
The wheels move, and on it goes. Who makes 
it go forward? The engineer. He turns 
that crank another way, and the engine stops. 
Who makes it stop? The engineer. He 
turns another crank, and the wheels move 
again, and the engine goes backward. Who 
makes it go backward ? The engineer. He 
turns that crank another way, and the engine 
stops again. Who makes it stop ? The en- 
gineer. He can control all its wheels. He 



148 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



has power over all its motions. He can 
make it do just what he wants it to do. 
And this shows us tlie kind of power that 
God has over everything in the world. The 
whole world is like a great engine ; and God 
is like the engineer who controls it. He has 
power over all things, and can make them 
do just what he wants to have done. He has 
power over all the angels in heaven ; over all 
the wicked spirits in hell ; and over all the 
people in the world. He has power over all 
the winds that blow, and the storms that 
burst; over rivers, and seas, and rains, and 
floods ; over all the beasts of the earth, and 
the fowls of the air, and the fishes of the 
sea. This is what the Bible means when 
it says, All things serve hvm.^^ He can 
make them " all work together for good to 
those who love him ; " and for evil to those 
who don't love him. And this is what we 
mean by the providence of God. It is God's 
power overall things, to make them do what 
he wants them to do. And so whenever 
anything wrong is done, God has somebody's 



GOD EEVEALETH SECRETS. 149 



conscience there, like a newspaper reporter, 
to write an account of it, and something else 
which he can use, like one of the detective 
police, to reveal the secret, or make it known. 

And when God makes things known in 
this way we say that he reveals secrets by his 
providence. Let me give you one or two 
illustrations of the way in which he does 
this. 

The first case that I will mention is a very 
solemn one. It took place about twenty 
years ago, in a town called Schwarzstein, in 
Germany. A man who was known to be 
very wicked, was accused of having stolen 
something. But nobody had seen him do 
it. There was no witness against him. He 
declared positively that he had not done it. 
And when they hesitated to believe him, be- 
cause his character was so bad, he took a 
Bible in his hand, and, holding it up towards 
heaven, he said, "May the first thunder- 
storm that comes up strike me dead, if I 
have stolen anything." Then he was re- 
leased, because nothing could be proved 



150 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



against him. Two or three days after, a 
heavy thuncler-gust passed over that town. 
This man was in his own house, sitting talking 
with several persons. His four children and 
a dog were playing in the same room. Sud- 
denly there came a sharp flash of lightning. 
It struck this man dead, in the midst of his 
friends. No one else in the room was in- 
jm*ed. God made the lightnmg his ser- 
vant to punish that wicked man. And 
singularly enough the lightning struck him 
right in the face, entering by his mouth, 
which had uttered the fearful lie, and killing 
him instantly. And so, by this providence, 
God revealed the secret of that man's wick- 
edness. 

In this illustration we see how God made 
use of the lightning to reveal the secret 
wickedness of a thief, and at the same time 
to punish him for his sin. 

I want to show you now how God made use 
of a little bird to reveal a secret of wicked* 
ness. 

There was a musician once, who had an 



GOD EEYEALETH SECEETS. 151 



ebony flute, with beautiful silver keys. 
Ebony, you know, is a kind of black wood ; 
very hard, bearing a high polish, and very 
much used for making musical instruments. 
But though this flute was very beautiful to 
look at, and gave out very soft, rich, sweet 
sounds, there was one defect about it. One 
of the upper keys was broken, so that it 
could not be used. When the musician was 
playing a tune on his flute, and came to this 
broken key, he always had to skip one note, 
which made an awkward kind of jar in the 
music. 

This musician had a friend, a tailor by 
trade, who was very fond of music, and often 
came to the musician's room to hear him 
sing and play, and to play a little himself, 
on the nice ebony flute with its silver keys. 
One night the tailor called to see the musi- 
cian, but, finding he was out, he contrived to 
get into the room, and stole his flute. There 
was nobody there to see him, and so he felt 
sure that the secret of his wickedness could 
not be found out. 



152 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



A day or two after, the tailor called on the 
musician again, and pretended to be veiy 
sorry to hear of his loss. He wondered 
who conld have been so mean as to steal it ; 
and even accused an old woman, who used 
to come to the house for the purpose of 
sweeping out the rooms, of having taken it. 
She was tried for stealing the flute ; but 
nothing could be proved against her, and 
so she was released. 

Not long after, the tailor moved away to 
another town. Here he could make free use 
of the stolen flute without the fear of its be- 
ing discovered; and he did so. He had a 
bird of which he was very fond, — a bull- 
finch. This is a bird something like a spar- 
row. It is quite common in England and 
the northern part of Europe. It has a soft, 
pleasant voice, and when kept in a cage can 
be taught to sing a variety of tunes. The 
tailor used to spend a good deal of his leis- 
ure time in teaching his bird different tunes 
by playing on the flute. But as birds can 
only learn by imitation they have to copy 



GOD REVEALETH SECRETS. 153 

exactly the lesson that is set them. And in 
teaching the bird its mnsic-lessons from the 
flute, when he came to the broken key, the 
tailor always had to skip one note. Of 
course the bird learned to skip that note 
too. WelL after a while the musician had 
occasion to go on business to the town to 
which his former neighbor, the tailor, had re- 
moved. While he was there he called to see 
him. To entertain him during his visit, the 
tailor brought in his beautiful bullfinch to 
show him, and let his friend hear the differ- 
ent tunes which he could whistle and sing. 
The musician was very much delighted to 
listen to the soft, sweet voice of the bird as 
he sung over one tune after another. But 
he soon noticed that, as the bird raised its 
voice, it always skipped one particular note. 
Then he thought about his lost flute with the 
broken key. He found that the note which 
the bird skipped, all the time, was the very 
same note which he used to skip himself, 
when playing on his ebony flute. The 
thought occurred to him that this bird had 



154 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



been taught to sing from lessons given on 
his flute. Then he felt sure that the tailor 
had stolen the flute. He turned to the 
tailor and said, "This bird skips the very 
same note that my flute used to skip ; noio I 
hnoiD that you stole my fluteJ'' The man 
was taken by surprise, and confessed that he 
had stolen it. He gave the flute back to its 
owner, and learned a lesson that day, which 
he never forgot, on the text, " Be sure your 
sin will find you outJ^ And here you see 
how God revealed the secret of the stolen 
flute. He revealed it by his providence. 
He made use of that little bird to find out 
this secret. 

Let me tell you another story, to show 
how God revealed a secret, of the same 
kind, by means of a little bird. 

There is a very singular text in the Bible, 
that Solomon wrote ; and the story I am 
now going to tell you will show the mean- 
ing of that text. These are the words of 
Solomon to which I refer : " A bird of the 
air shall carry the voice and that which hath 



GOD EEVEALETH SECEETS. 155 

wings shall tell the matter." (Ecclesiastes 
X. 20.) 

One Sunday, a minister had taken up a 
collection in his church for the poor. After 
church was over he took the money into his 
study, behind the church, and counted it 
out. After finding out how much money 
there was in the collection, he put it in a 
drawer in his study-table, locked the door of 
his study, and went out to visit a sick person. 
When he came back he opened the drawer, 
and found that somebody had been there, and 
ten dollars of the collection had been stolen. 
It seemed very strange ; for the study-door 
was fastened, as it was when he went out ; but 
the money was gone. "Who can have taken 
it ? " said the minister to himself. It was very 
easy to ask this question, but very hard to 
answer it. It seemed as though it were im- 
possible ever to find out who had stolen that 
money. But " there is a God in heaven who 
revealeth secrets." We shall see directly, 
how, hy his providence^ he revealed this 
secret, and caused the thief to be found out. 



156 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



On his way home from chm^ch, the min- 
ister called in to see a laclv belonscino- to his 
congregation, and who lived not far from 
the chnrch. In conversation with this lady 
he sj)oke of the money which had been 
stolen from his stndy, and said how glad he 
would be if he could only find out who had 
taken it. 

"Well, sk," she said, "I think I can help 
you in that." 

" I am very glad to hear that. But pray 
tell me how you came to know anji^hing 
about it ? " 

"ril tell you how it happened. You 
know I'm very fond of the little biixls ; and 
every spring, when they come back again, 
from the warm countries where they have 
spent the winter, I'm always on the watch 
for them. And when they first make their 
appearance, I love to see them, and listen to 
their cheerful voices when they sing their 
merrj^ songs. Well, it so hapjDcned this 
afternoon, that, on entering my room, I 
heard the voice of a jay-bird. It was the 



GOD REVEALETH SECRETS. 157 

first time I had heard one this spring. I 
was delighted to hear it, and went to the 
entry-window, which was open, that I might 
see the little stranger, and listen to the 
pleasant notes he was singing. On a branch 
of the tree, near the window, sat a beautiful 
blue jay. I stood a while and looked at him, 
and heard him sing his sweet spring song. 
While I was standing there, my attention 
was drawn towards your study, behind the 
church. I saw a stout boy, about fourteen 
or fifteen years of age, who, I thought, 
must have been after some mischief. He 
climbed up to the window in your study, 
and tried to open it ; but it was fastened, 
and he couldn't get in. Then I saw him 
go to the church- windows, on that side of. 
the building, and try them. Several of 
them were fastened ; but, at last, he found 
one that was not fastened; he opened it, 
climbed up, and entered the church in that 
way. I have no doubt that boy was the 
thief who stole your money." 

When the lady described the dress and 



158 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



appearance of the boy, the minister said he 
Imew him very well. He had been a 
scholar in the school, but had fallen into 
bad company, and had lately given up at- 
tending. He knew where he lived, and 
went directly to his mother's house. He 
found him in, and charged him with the 
theft. The boy, of course, denied it; but, 
on searching him, the money was found in 
his pocket. Then he confessed that he had 
climbed in at the window, and opened the 
study-door and the table-drawer, with some 
old keys that he had with him. 

The minister did not have him taken up, 
and put in prison, on account of his poor 
old mother ; but, what was better, he talked 
kindly and earnestly with him. He tried to 
show him the wickedness of his conduct, 
and how impossible it was to go on in sin 
without being found out, and having to 
suffer for it severely. It had a good effect 
upon the boy. He saw that he was in great 
danger of going to ruin, and he resolved to 
tm^n round and do better. He promised the 



GOD REVEALETH SECRETS. 159 

minister that, if he would forgive him what 
he had done, he would break off from his 
bad companions, and come regularly to 
school again. The minister consented ; and 
the boy kept his promise, and became a 
good boy. 

Now this is a good illustration of the way 
in which the providence of God works to 
reveal secrets. You see how God made use 
of that little bird to make known the secret 
of that stolen money. And to do this, it 
was necessary that the bird should come 
under that lady's window, just at that par- 
ticular time. If he had come there half an 
hour later, or half an hour earlier, the lady 
would not have been in her room to hear 
him, and this secret would not have been 
revealed. And then, it was necessary for 
the bird to come and sing on that side of the 
house ; for it so happened that that particu- 
lar window, in the entry, to which the lady 
ran, and from which she looked at the jay- 
bird, and listened to his song, was the only 
window in the house, from which the min- 



160 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



ister's study, behind the church, could be 
seen. And when we see how wonderfully 
God orders all things, we see how it is, as 
I said before, that the world is like a great 
engine, and God is like the engineer, who 
puts his hand on every wheel and spring, 
and controls them all, and makes them all 
do just what he wants to have done. 

" There is a God in heaven who revealeth 
secrets." God is a ivonderful Revealer. 
We have spoken of two waj^s in which he 
reveals secrets : one is by conscience^ the 
other is by providence. 

And there is one very important lesson 
for us to learn from this subject ; it is this : 
Never do anything that you are not willing to 
have knoivn. When Jesus was on earth he 
said, " There is nothing hid that shall not be 
known." And the reason why everything 
will be known is, that "there is a God in 
heaven who revealeth secrets." K a man 
should go and steal, right in the presence of 
a policeman, might he certainly expect to be 
taken up? Yes. People try to get out of 



GOD REVEALETH SECRETS. 161 

sight of the police when they want to steal, 
or do anjrthing wrong. But God has his 
police everywhere. We never can get away 
from them. Then we never should do what 
we are not willing to have God see us do. 
Wherever you go, wherever you are, what- 
ever you are doing, remember the words of 
the text : — 

" There is a God in heaven who revealeth 
secrets.^^ 



11 



VI. 

" <| am t\it libxtiQ hxtub hj^it^ mmt hokn 

John vi. 51. 



YI. 



am % libing hxtuts bsl^it)^ tumz bobjjt from l^mbm/* — 

We all know what bread is. It is one of 
the first things we learn to use, when we are 
little children. It is a thing we are obliged 
to use more than almost anything else as long 
as we live. It is a thing, too, more impor- 
tant for us than most other things. There 
are a great many things we have, which we 
find pleasant and comfortable, but which we 
could do without, better than we could do 
without bread. It is a pleasant thing to 
own a fine house, and have plenty of elegant 
furniture in it; but we can live, and be 
happy without such things. It is a pleasant 
thing to have plenty of money, so that we 
can buy anything we want ; but we can live 
and be happy, without having much money. 
It is very pleasant to have our dear parents 

165 



166 



BIBLE WOKDERS. 



and friends about us, who love us, and are 
kind to us, and try to make us comfortable ; 
but we could live, if they were taken away; 
yes, and God could even make us happy 
without them. It is a pleasant thing to have 
good health, and the use of our limbs, so that 
we can go about, and do whatever we want 
to do ; but peo]Dle can live, and be happy too, 
without health, and even without the use of 
their limbs. And so there are a great many 
other things which may be very pleasant to 
have, but yet they are not necessary. But 
it is different with bread. This is necessary. 
It is so necessary that we could neither live, 
nor be comfortable, or happy without it. 

And here let me say that when Jesus 
speaks of bread, in our text, he does not 
mean only a loaf, made out of flour, but what 
he intends is suitable food. It means the 
same thing in the Lord's prayer, when we 
ask our Father in heaven to — " give us this 
day our daili/ bread, That is a prayer for 
suitable food. So that when we are talking 
about "the living bread, which came down 



THE WONDERFUL BREAD. 167 



from heaven," we can think of a loaf of good, 
wholesome bread ; but we can think of this 
as representing all kinds of suitable food. 
And if this is what is meant by the word 
bread, then we can all see, in a minute, how 
impossible it is to say too much about its • 
being necessary. No one can be happy or 
useful, and no one can live even without 
bread. And when Jesus wanted to teach 
us what he does for his people, and how im- 
portant it is that we should know him, and 
have him for our Saviour, how kind it was 
in him to compare himself to bread ! Be- 
cause we are so familiar with bread ; we 
know so much about it. And because, when 
we see it on our tables every day ; when we 
handle it ; when it tastes so pleasant to us if 
we are hungry ; and when we feel it do our 
bodies so much good, — then we should be re- 
minded of that blessed Saviour, who said of 
himself, " I am the living bread which came 
down from heaven." 

Here we have another of the Bible won- 
ders. Our sermon to day is about the Won- 



168 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



derful Bread. J esus is this wonderful bread. 
And I wish to speak of three reasons why 
this bread is wonderful. And each of the three 
things we are to speak of, about this bread, 
begins with the letter S. 

I. This bread is wonderful, in the first place j 
for its poioer to strengthen. 

This is the natural effect of bread. This 
is the reason why the Bible tells us of, " bread 
that strengthens man's heart." The heart 
here means the whole body. When we eat 
a piece of good, wholesome bread, every part 
of the body is made strong by it. Some of 
it goes to the head, and some to the feet, 
some to the arms, and some to the legs, 
some goes down even to the tips of the fin- 
gers and the ends of the toes ; and wherever 
it goes it helps to make the body strong. 
Without bread, — that is, without proper 
food, — our flesh would waste away, and 
we should become like skeletons. All our 
strength would be gone. We should be unfit 
for any kind of work, and should soon die. 

But good bread, when we eat it, puts flesh 



THE WONDERFUL BREAD. 



169 



on our bones, and strength into our limbs, 
and makes us ready and able to walk about, 
or work, or do anything we have to do. 

But our souls must have something to eat, 
and live upon, as well as the body. And 
knowledge is the food of the soul. The things 
that we learn to know and believe are what 
the soul feeds upon. But there is only one 
kind of knowledge that makes good bread 
for the soul, and that is the knowledge of 
Jesus. It is not every kind of bread that 
will make the body strong. Suppose a 
man should make up his mind to eat no other 
bread but what was made out of saivdust, 
would that make him strong? No. Could 
he live on it ? No ; it would kill him. K we 
want bread that will make our bodies strong, 
what must we have it made out of ? Good, 
wholesome flour. And so, if we want to have 
good bread for our souls, — food that will 
make them strong, — we must get the right 
sort of knowledge. And the knowledge of 
Jesus is the right sort of knowledge for our 
souls to feed on. When we learn what the 



170 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



Bible teaches us about Jesus, and believe it 
in our hearts, then Jesus becomes "the bread 
of life," or "living bread," to us, and we are 
eating that bread. Jesus said to Peter, 
"jPee^Z my lambs." What he meant by this 
was, teach the children all about me ; how I 
was born in Bethlehem ; how I taught in 
Jerusalem ; and how I died on the cross for 
them, that they might be pardoned and 
saved. And when our teachers and ministers 
do this for us, then they are feeding our 
souls. They are taking the bread that came 
down from heaven, and breaking it up for 
us, that we may eat it, and live, and be- 
come strong to serve Jesus. The lambs of 
Jesus represent the young people connected 
with our churches. The sheep of Jesus rep- 
resent the older people connected with our 
churches. Jesus wants his ministers to feed 
the lambs, as well as the sheep. And they 
are both to be fed in the same way, that is, with 
the knowledge of Jesus, or the bread that 
came down from heaven. This is wonderful 
bread, because of its power to strengthen. 



THE WONDERFUL BREAD. 171 

You know how strong Joseph was, when 
he would rather lose his place in Potiphar's 
house, and be cast into prison, than commit 
the sin he was tempted to commit. And it 
was eating this living bread which made him 
so strong. You know how strong David 
was when he was not afraid to go forth by 
himself, and fight the great giant of the 
Philistines. It was eating this bread which 
made him so strong. You know how strong 
Daniel was when he would rather be thrown 
into the den of the hungry lions, than give 
up praying to God. It was eating this living 
bread which made him so strong. You know 
how strong St. Paul was when he was willing 
to give up everything he had in the world 
rather than stop loving and serving Jesus ; 
when he went all over the world preaching 
about Jesus ; though he was stoned, and 
beaten with rods, and bound with chams, and 
put in prison for it, still he went on till they 
put him to death. It was eating this living 
bread which made Paul so strong. 

You have heard about Martin Luther. 



172 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



He was so strong in his heart, that he stood 
np alone against the Pope, and the Chnrch 
of Eome, to fight with them. The Pope 
wanted to take this living bread away from 
the people. But Luther thought they ought 
to have it. He wanted to give it to every- 
body. The Pope tried to make him stop 
doing this. But Luther wouldn't stop. 
Then the Pope tried to buy him off with 
money. But Luther cared nothing for the 
Pope's money. He would not be bought 
off. Then the Pope tried to frighten 
Luther. He threatened to have him tor- 
tured in the most dreadful way, and then 
burned to death. But Luther cared no 
more for the Pope's threatenings than he did 
for his money. He said he never would stop 
preaching to the people about Jesus, and 
so keep from them the living bread. And 
he never did stop till he died. And God 
did not let the Pope kill him either. How 
very strong Martin Luther was ! And it 
was eating this bread which came down from 
heaven that made him so. 



THE WONDEEFUIi BREAD* 173 

And, if you want to be strong in heart, 
as Luther was ; if you would be strong to 
resist temptation, and strong to overcome 
sinful tempers and habits ; if you would be 
strong to serve God, and do good, this is 
the only way in which you can get this 
strength. You must eat this living bread ; 
that is, you must learn what the Bible tells 
you about Jesus ; and you must believe what 
it tells. This is what is meant by "eating 
the living bread;" and it is only this that 
can make your hearts strong. Jesus said, 
"I am the living bread, which came down 
from heaven." This is wonderful bread ! 
It is wonderful, in the first place, for its 
power to strengthen. 

In the second place y it is wonderful for its 

power to SATISFY. 

When you are very hungry, you know 
how earnestly you long to have some good 
bread to eat. But when you have eaten as 
much as you want, you are satisfied ; your 
hunger is gone, and you feel contented and 
happy. And this is just the kind of feeling 



174 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



we have in our souls when we have eaten of 
this livmg bread. If we learn to know and 
love Jesus, and to believe what the Bible 
tells us about him, it makes us feel per- 
fectly satisfied and happy. And there is 
nothing in the world that can make us feel 
so but eating this living bread. 

We often hear people talk about being " as 
happy as a king." But this is a mistake. 
Kjugs are about the most unhappy of all 
men. I was reading lately about a king who 
began to reign when he was very young. 
As soon as his father died, and the crown 
was put on his own head, he thought he was 
going to have a very happy time. He was 
so sure of this that he had a large silver- 
toned bell made, and put up in the tower of 
his palace. He had a rope, connected with 
this bell, in every room in the palace. He 
told his friends that he was going to ring 
this bell whenever he felt happy; and he 
said he expected they would be tired of 
hearing the bell ring, and he would be tired 
of pulling the rope. But the story says 



THE WOKDEEFUL BREAD. 175 

that the king lived to be an old man, and he 
had so many cares and troubles that he never 
rang the bell but once, and that was just 
as he was dying. Ah, that king's crown 
was not able to make him happy ! But, if 
he had only known and loved Jesus, and 
had eaten this living bread which came down 
from heaven, he might have rung that bell 
every day of his life. 

There was a minister once, who often used 
to say to his people, "God is good, and is 
able to make his people always happy." 
One time, his only son — a bright, darling 
boy — died very suddenly. The day of his 
funeral came. The coffin was lowered into 
the grave. Another minister was there at- 
tending to the funeral. Just before he 
finished the service, he asked the weeping 
father if he had anji;hing to say. Most of 
his congregation were standing round the 
giwe. "Yes," said he, "I would like to 
say a few words. My friends, when I was 
in no trouble, you have often heard me say 
that God is good, and always able to make 



176 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



his people happy. And now, here, as I 
stand beside the grave of my darling boy, 
I can say from my heart, God is good, and 
I am satisfied even in my sorrow." That 
minister had learned to eat of this wonderful 
bread, and he was feeling its power to 
satisfy. 

But let me tell you about a Christian 
woman, now living a few miles from the city 
of Hartford, in Connecticut, whose case 
illustrates this part of our subject better, 
perhaps, than anything else that could be 
mentioned. Her name is Chloe Lankton. 
She never has been well since she was a 
child. Since the time she was eighteen 
years of age she has been unable to help 
herself to anything. She has been lying in 
her bed now, for thirty six years ^ without 
ever being able to get up once, or to do any- 
thing for herself. Her poor body is wasted 
almost to a skeleton, by a lingering disease 
which no earthly physician can cure. She 
often suffers such dreadful pain that for 
night after night she can neither sleep nor 



THE WONDERFUL BREAD. 177 

rest ; and for days together she can eat no 
food. Her family have all died since she 
has been lying on that bed of suffering. 
She has no relative left in the world. She 
has no money of her own to live on. She is 
supported entirely by money sent to her, 
from time to time, by kind, Christian 
friends, in different parts of the country, 
who have heard of her sufferings, and are 
glad to do something to help her. Now, 
you can hardly think it possible for any one 
to be in a more sorrowful condition than 
this. On hearing her sad story, we might 
any of us say, "Poor creature, how wretched 
and unhappy she must be ! " But it is not 
so at all. She never murmurs or complains. 
She is always patient, and cheerful, and 
often very happy. The presence of Jesus 
has been a sweet support and comfort to her 
through all these years of suffering. Jf 
Chloe Lankton only had a bell, like the 
king, of whom I spoke a little while ago, — a 
bell to be rung when she was happy, — there 
would, perhaps, be very few days in which 

13 



178 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



the people in her neighborhood would not 
hear the ringing of that bell. And often, in 
the long, tedious nights, when pain prevents 
her from getting a wink of sleep, that bell 
would be heard, telling how happy she is 
amidst all her suffering, when she thinks of 
the love of Jesus, and of that blessed home 
which he is preparing for her, " where is no 
more pain^ neither sorrow, nor crying," but 
"fulness of joy and jDleasures forever more." 
Chloe Lankton has been taught to eat of this 
wonderful bread that we are speaking of, 
and she has felt its power to satisfy. Some- 
times we wonder why God lets good people 
have so much pain and suffering to bear. 
One reason why he does so, no doubt, is to 
show the power of this wonderful bread to 
satisfy his people. For, if this bread is 
able to make those who eat it happy when 
they are poor and sick ; when their bodies 
are racked with pain ; when their limbs are 
bound with chains ; when they are thrust 
into dungeons ; and even when they are 
burning at the stake ; then we may well say 



THE WONDEEFUL BREAD. 179 



that it is wonderful bread. It is wonaerful 
in its power to satisfy. 

The third thing for which this bread is 
wonderful is its jpoiver to save. 

This is the special work that Jesus came 
to do. And this is the reason why this 
name Jesus was given to him by the angel 
from heaven. Jesus means a Saviour. He 
came to "save his people from their sins." 
And he does this by this wonderful bread 
that he gives them. When we hear what 
the Bible tells us about Jesus, and believe 
it, ive are saved. This is what the apostle 
means when he says that God's word — that 
is, what the Bible tells us about Jesus — 
able to save our soids,^^ 

You know when the Israelites were on 
their journey from Egypt to the land of 
Canaan, at one place a great many poisonous 
serpents got in among the people and bit 
them. All who were bitten became very 
sick, and many of them died. None of the 
doctors could cure them. But God told 
Moses to make a serpent of brass, and set 



180 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



it upon a high pole, so that everybody might 
see it. Then he told all the people to look 
at that serpent, and that every one who 
looked at it should be cured and made well. 
AVhen Jesus was on earth, he told the peo- 
ple, to whom he was preaching, one day, 
about this serpent. He said that this ser- 
pent represented himself ; he said that, just 
as Moses lifted up the serpent on the pole to 
save the bodies of the Israelites from dying, 
so he himself was to be lifted up, by being 
nailed to the cross, that he might save the 
souls of his people ; and that, as the dying 
Israelites were saved by looking at that ser- 
pent, so dying sinners should be saved by 
believing in him. 

Now, I want to tell you some stories to 
show how God makes use of this wonderful 
bread, or what the Bible tells us about Jesus 
in order to save the souls of men. 

Some time ago there was a missionary, 
in India, who had been preaching about 
Jesus to the people there for a long time. 
One day, a man came to this missionary and 



THE WONDERFUL BREAD. 181 



asked him to baptize him. The missionary- 
was glad to see this man, and had a long 
talk with him, to see if he was prepared to 
be baptized. He found out that the man 
had been born and brought up as a heathen. 
He had been a very wicked man too. For a 
long time he had belonged to a band of 
robbers. This band used to get their living 
by prowling about the countiy, going from 
one village to another, and robbing and 
stealing, wherever they could get a chance. 

One night they went to a village, and 
broke open several houses. One of these 
was a house in which a Christian teacher 
lived. They got a great many things from 
these different houses. They carried them 
to a secret place in the woods, near the vil- 
lage, where they used to meet, for the pur- 
pose of dividing the spoil which they had 
taken. They met there, the next day, to 
examine the things they had stolen the 
night before. Among the things which were 
given to this man, as his share of the plunder, 
was a copy of the Bible. He had never 



182 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



seen a Bible before. But he had heard 
about it. He knew it was the book out of 
which the Christian missionaries preached, 
and which tokl about Jesus, of whom they 
had so much to say. He felt curious to 
know what was in the book ; and made up 
his mind that he would read it through. 
But, long before he had read it through, it made 
him feel that he was a sinner. It led him to 
repent of his sins, and believe in Jesus, He 
separated himself from the band of robbers, 
and began to lead a new life. The mission- 
ary was glad to hear this story of the robber. 
He baptized him, and the man became a 
member of his church, and a very useful 
Christian. Sometime after he had become a 
Christian, this man lent his Bible to his 
brother, and he became a Christian too, 
through reading it ; and so this stolen Bible 
was the means of converting two heathen 
men to Jesus. And here we see the power 
of this wonderful bread to save men. 

Here is another story which shows the 
same thing. 



THE WONDEEFUL BEEAD. 183 

Some years ago an English officer had 
charge of a station, belonging to his govern- 
ment, up among the mountains in India. 
Here he had a number of the native people 
at work for him. At one time it became 
necessary for him to return to England, and 
be absent a long while from his post. He 
was far away from any missionary station, 
and there was no other English officer there 
whom he could leave in charge of his post. 
There was a good deal of valuable property 
there, besides the many people who were 
working for him. After considering it a 
great while, there was only one person he 
could think of leaving in his place ; this was 
one of the natives, who lived in his neigh- 
borhood. Of course he was a heathen man, 
' as all the Hindoos are ; but he was a very re- 
spectable man, honest and faithful, and he 
felt sure that everything would be safe in his 
care. So he made a bargain with this man 
to take charge of the station, and attend to 
the workmen while he was away. This 
officer was a Christian man ; and one of the 



184 



BIBLE WONDEKS. 



last things he did before he went away, was 
to give a copy of the New Testament to the 
person he was leaving in charge of his sta- 
tion. Then he went away. 

He had to go to England, and come to 
this country too, before he could go back to 
India. More than a year had passed away 
before he could return. But at last he got 
through with his business, and went back to 
his place- When he was on his journey 
back, he often used to wonder to himself 
how he would find things on his return. 
He wondered if the man he had left in 
charge had taken good care of things. He 
wondered if the workmen had been well 
attended to, and if everything had gone on 
properly. He wondered whether he should 
hear many complaints, or whether it would 
prove that all things had gone on satisfac- 
torily. It was Saturday evening when he 
got back to his station, and when Sunday 
morning came, no one out of his own house 
knew that he had returned. He looked out 
of his window, as soon as he got up in the 



THE WONDERFUL BREAD. 185 

morning, and was delighted to see how nice 
everything looked. He felt sure that the 
man he had left in charge of the place had 
taken good care of things. About ten 
o'clock he heard a bell ring. He wondered 
what it meant. Then he saw a number of 
the workmen, and some of the natives, who 
lived in the neighborhood, gathering into a 
school-house near by. After a while he 
heard them sing a hymn. He wondered 
what all this meant. He called one of his 
servants, and asked what they were doing in 
the school-house. The servant said they 
had church there now, every Sunday. 

" Has any missionary been here since I have 
been away?" asked the officer. 

" No, sir," said the servant. 

" Then who started this church, and who 
conducts it ? " 

" The sahib " — this is the Indian name for 
master — " you left in charge of the station 
when you went away, sir," was the answer. 

" And what do they do in church ? " in- 
quired the officer. 



186 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



" They siug, and pray, and then the sahib 
reads to them out of the New Testament, 
and talks to them about Jesus." 

This was all very wonderful to the officer. 
When he went away this man was a heathen. 
He hated and despised the religion of Jesus. 
And what had made this great change in 
him, in little more than a year? It ivas the 
New Testament ichicli the officer Jiad given Mm 
before he left. That Testament was full of 
that wonderful bread that we are talking 
about. When the man began to read that 
Testament he was eating this living bread. 
That Testament was a printed missionary. 
It was very quiet and silent ; but it spoke to 
this man's heart with great power. It 
showed him that he was a sinner. It 
showed him that Jesus is the only Saviour 
for sinners. It led him to pray to Jesus. 
It taught him to love Jesus, and gave him a 
desire to serve him. One of the first things 
he did after the return of the officer, when he 
was released from the charge of the station, 
was to go to the nearest missionary and be 



THE WONDEEFUL BREAD. 187 

baptized ; and now he is preaching Jesus to 
his countrymen. 

This shows us the power of this wonder- 
ful bread to mve men. 

I have only one more story to tell you 
about the saving power of this wonderful 
bread. 

In a village in England there lived a la- 
boring man by the name of Jones. For a 
number of years both he and his wife lived 
careless, wicked lives, without thinking 
about God, or trying to serve him. After 
awhile, however, Sally Jones, as the man's 
wife was called, became a Christian. Her 
husband had never been a kind man to her. 
He had always been cross and ill-tempered. 
After this change took place in his wife, 
although it made her a better wife, and a 
better mother, than she had ever been before, 
yet he became worse-tempered than ever. He 
used to scold her, and swear at her, and beat 
her on account of her religion. Some of her 
neighbors advised her not to live with him ; 
and others said she ought to have him taken 



188 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



up, and fined, or put in prison, for his cruel 
treatment of her. But she would not listen 
to them. She bore the ill-treatment of her 
husband with the greatest patience ; she 
never spoke crossly to him, but was always 
gentle and kind. She hoped, in this way, to 
show him what a good thing religion is, and 
persuade him to become a Christian too. 

One morning, when he was going to work, 
Jones told his wife to have his dinner ready 
for him by twelve o'clock, and said, if he 
had to wait a minute for it when he came 
home, he would beat her till she could not 
stand. There was no occasion for him to say 
this, for his wife was very careful to do 
everji;hing that he told her to do. 

At noon, on that day, he returned home 
about ten minutes before twelve. But the 
dinner was all ready to be put on the table, 
and his wife was sitting by the table reading 
the Bible. Jones went up to her with a 
savage look, as though he meant to hit her. 
But when he got near to her he stood still a 
moment, and said to himself, "I wonder 



THE WONDERFUL BREAD. 189 



what's in that book, anyhow?" He had 
never learned to read ; but he knew the let- 
ters, and could spell a little. So he looked 
down on the page, and, putting his finger 
on the last verse of the chapter his wife had 
just been reading, — the sixth chapter of 
Romans, — he began to spell it out, in this 
way: "T-h-e, that spells the, I know." 
"W-a-g-e-s, what does that spell, Sally?" 
" Wages," said his wife. " The wages — o-f, 
of, s-i-n, sin, i-s, is, d-e-a-t-h; there's 
another big word, Sally, what's that?" 
"Death," was her answer. Then he seemed 
frightened. He repeated the w^ords over to 
himself, — "The wages of sin is death ; " and 
said, "Well, if anybody ever earned those 
wages, I have." Then he ate his dinner 
without saying another word. After dinner 
he said "Good-by" kindly to his wife. It 
was the first time he had spoken a kind word 
to her for many a day. When he came home 
in the evening he was quite sober, which was 
very unusual, for he generally came home 
drunk, or nearly so. The first words he 



190 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



spoke on coming in were, "Those terrible 
wages ! Sally, is the book full of that dark 
side?" 

" Oh, no, Tom," said his wife ; "there is a 
bright side too, as well as a dark one. Just 
let me read the rest of the verse." She 
opened her Bible, and read, "The wages of 
sin is death ; but the gift of God is eternal 
life^ through Jesus Christ our Lord.^^ Then 
she told him 

" the old, old story, 

Of unseen things above, 
Of Jesus and his glory. 

Of Jesus and his love." 

He listened earnestly, and the tears were 
running freely down his cheeks, while his 
wife was talking to him. When she stopped, 
he sobbed out, " God be merciful to me a 
sinner ! " Then his wife kneeled down by his 
side and prayed luith him and for him. He 
believed in Jesus, and found pardon and 
peace in believing. The bright side of that 
one verse saved him : " The gift of God is 
eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord." 



THE WONDERFUL BREAD. 191 

Now, you see, when that good women ex- 
plamecl this verse of the Bible to her hus- 
band, she was giving him a piece of this 
wonderful bread to eat. And eating that 
living bread saved his soul. 

" Jesus said, I am the livhig bread which 
came down from heaven." 

This is wonderful bread. There are three 
reasons why it is so ; because of its wonder- 
ful power to strengthen, to satisfy, to save. 

Now, there are two things we ought to do 
with this bread. One is this , — we ought to use 
it ourselves. Bread is made to be eaten. It 
will do us no good if we keep it in the closet, 
or leave it standing on the table. Bread is 
of no use till we eat it. And so it is with 
Jesus, this wonderful bread. God gave him 
to us that we might use him. The right use 
to make of Jesus is to take him as our 
Saviour. When we believe what the Bible 
tells us about Jesus, and try to love and 
serve him, then we are making a right use 
of him. This is one thins: we ouo^ht to do 
with this bread, — ice ought to use it ourselves. 



192 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



And then there is another thing we ought 
to do with it, — we ought to give it to others. 
There are multitudes who are perishing for 
want of this bread. We should do all we 
can to send it to them. Remember what 
Jesus said, " Freely ye have received, freely 
give." 



VII. 

mnui h hoxn agaim" 

John iii. 7. 



YII. 



How many changes are taking place about 
us, all the time ! Look at the sky ; how it 
changes ! How dark it is at night ! How 
bright it is by day ! And as the clouds sail 
over it, how many changes they keep 
making ! Look at the seasons. What 
changes they are making continually ! Win- 
ter comes. Then the flowers all fade and die. 
The little birds fly away to warmer climates. 
The leaves drop off* from the trees, and the 
forests look brown and bare. The rivers are 
frozen. Snow covers the ground, and cold, 
stormy winds are blowing. Then spring comes 
along. She thaws out the rivers and melts 
away the snow. She breathes her warm, 
gentle breath over the landscape. The flow- 
ers spring up to meet her. The fields grow 
green, the trees put out their leaves, and 

195 



196 



BIBLE WOKDEES. 



the little birds come back again to sing among 
their branches. Then summer ripens the 
grain and the fruit, and autumn brings the 
time for gathering them. How many changes 
these seasons make ! Our families are 
changing. Some that belong to them get 
married, and move away. Some go off, on 
business, to live in other places ; while others 
are taken away by death. And then we 
change ourselves, as we keep growing older. 
From little babies in om^ mothers' arms till 
we get to be full-grown men and women, how 
many changes we have to go through ! But, 
in the words of our text, Jesus speaks of one 
change very different from all others. He 
was talking here to Mcodemus, a ruler of the 
Jews. He had heard a great deal of Jesus 
of Nazareth, the wonderful prophet and 
teacher that everybody was talking about. 
He wanted to see and hear him. But he 
was ashamed to come in the daytime, lest 
people should see him ; so he came at night. 
Jesus at once began to talk to him about a 
change of heart, — that great change which 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 197 

we must all pass through, before we can be- 
come true Christians. It is so great a change 
that Jesus compares it to being "born again." 
Mcodemus didn't understand what Jesus 
meant, at first. He thought he meant to say 
that we must become little babies again, just 
as when we were first born into the world. 
Jesus told him that that was not what he 
meant. He showed him that he was speaking 
of a change that must take place inside of us, 
and not outside : the change that takes place 
in us when our hearts are made new, when 
we learn to love Jesus, and desire to serve 
and please him. And then," to show Mcode- 
mus how important this change is, he re- 
peated what he had said before ; saying, 
"Ye must be born again." 

This is a wonderful change. I might speak 
of many things for which this change is won- 
derful ; but now I will only speak of one ; 
it is a ivonderful change on account of its 
mpOETANCE. And there are three things 
which show the wonderful importance of this 
change. 



198 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



1. It is wonderful in its importance^ in the 
first place ^ because we can't be good with- 
out IT. 

Some people think that it is all nonsense 
to talk so much about the importance of a 
change of heart. They say that when we 
are bom our hearts are not really bad, but 
they are like pieces of white paper, with 
nothing written on them ; and that if we are 
only careful not to let any ink-blots fall on 
them, and not let anything bad be written on 
them, they will be always clean and good, 
just like sheets of paper with nothing but 
beautiful writing on them. But this is con- 
trary to the teaching of the Bible. David 
says, — and what was true of him is true of 
us all, — "I was shapen in iniquity ; and in 
sin did my mother conceive me." (Ps. K. 
5.) That means that he was born with a 
sinful heart. So were you. So was I, and 
so were all people. David says again, 
"The wicked go astray as soon as they 
are born, speaking lies." (Ps. Iviii. 3.) 
These passages show us that though when we 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 199 

are born into the world our sins do not ap- 
pear^ yet they are in us, and will iDe sure to 
grow, by and by, in spite of all we can do, 
of ourselves, to prevent it. Instead of com- 
paring our hearts, when we are born, to 
pieces of clean white paper, that, if we are 
careful, may always be kept clean, it would 
be more proper to compare them to beds or 
plots of ground in a garden. There is 
nothing growing in them ; but there are plenty 
of seeds hidden away in them that will be 
sure to spring up and grow, by and by. But 
those seeds are bad seeds. Briers and thorns 
and poisonous plants will be sure to grow up 
from them. Those seeds must be changed, 
and other seeds, good seeds, must be put in 
the place of them, or else we never can have 
a good garden. This shows the importance 
of the great change that Jesus was speaking 
about to Nicodemus, when he said, "Ye 
must be born again." It is important, be- 
cause we can't be good without it. Some 
people say, " Oh ! if children are only taught 
and trained properly, if they are rightly 



200 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



educated, and have good examples set before 
them, they will be sure to be good, without 
having their hearts changed." But this is a 
great mistake ; we never can be good unless 
our hearts are changed. Let me tell you a 
fable, which I met with lately, and which 
will show both the meaning and the truth of 
what I am now saying. A fable, you know, 
is something which is not true ; something 
which somebody has fancied, or imagined, for 
the pui*pose of illustrating or teaching an 
important truth. This fable gives us a good 
illustration of the truth, that without a 
change of heart we can't be good. 

The fable says there was a great emperor 
in China, once, who had a strange fondness 
for making pets out of pigs. He very much 
disliked their dirty habits, and he often used 
to say that he wished they could be cured of 
those habits, and made neat and clean, so 
that they might be loved and petted like little 
lambs. He said it was not the pigs' own 
fault that their ways were unclean, but only 
because they were not properly taught, and 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 201 



taken care of. "Now," said he, one day, to 
some of his friends, " I mean to prove to 
you that this is so. I will take a little pig, 
and bring him up carefully, in the way I 
think right, and I will show you how nice, 
and clean, and gentle he will become." 

So he had a handsome palace built for his 
pet pig to live in. Then he got a little pig, 
as soon as it was born ; had it separated from 
its brothers and sisters, and brought, with its 
mother alone, into the palace. As soon as 
the little pig was able to live without his 
mother, the mother was taken away from him, 
that he might not learn anything bad from 
her. He was never allowed to see any other 
pigs. He was fed on silver dishes ; he slept 
on a thick velvet carpet, and was never al- 
lowed to go in the mud. He had some of the 
wisest men in the kingdom to take care of 
him, and he was taught everything that a 
pig could be taught. At length, when he 
was full grown, the emperor said his educa- 
tion was finished ; he had been so well trained 
that he might be allowed to go anywhere, for 



202 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



his good habits would keep him from doing 
anything that was naughty, or improper for 
the emperor's pet to do. So, one day, the 
emperor told his servants to get his pet pig 
ready to go out, and take a walk with him. 
Then they dressed him up in a blue velvet 
jacket, embroidered with gold, which had 
been made for him ; some gold rings were 
put on his legs, and a jewel in his nose. The 
emperor was pleased to see his pet look so 
fine, and he set off with him to take a walk 
through the city, that piggy might see a little 
of the world, and all the people might know 
what a nice, genteel, well-behaved pig he 
was. 

But, alas for all his hopes ! He was- just 
beginning to feel proud of his pet's behavior, 
when they came to a place where some pigs 
were rolling in the mud. In a moment, the 
emperor's pet forgot all about his good train- 
ing, and his fine clothes. Before the ser- 
vants could stop him the pig gave a grunt, 
and, starting off as fast as he could run, he 
plunged in among the other pigs, and rolled 




1 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 203 



about in the mud, as heartily as any of 
them. 

The poor emperor was very much disap- 
pointed ; but he took his pig home, had him 
washed, and put in his palace again, and or- 
dered his teachers to give him another course 
of lessons. He said it was not the fault of 
his pet that he had done wrong, but it was 
owing to the bad example set him by 
the other pigs. He intended hereafter to 
keep him away from the reach of such ex- 
amples, and then he was sure his pet would 
behave himself properly. 

After a while, when he thought that the 
pig had forgotten all about it, he took him out 
to walk again. But, this time, to keep him 
away from any bad example, he concluded 
only to walk in the garden of the palace. So 
they took a nice long walk through the gar- 
den, and the pig behaved very well, till, on 
their return, they came to the back of the 
palace. Here was a ditch in which the dirt 
from the garden was thrown, and which was 
full of mud. The pig had never seen this 



204 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



before. There were no other pigs near to 
set him a bad example, but, as soon as he 
came in sight of it, he ran off to the ditch, 
jumped in and rolled about in the mud, just 
as he had done before. 

Now the emperor was in despair. He 
loved his pig, and wanted him to be a clean, 
decent pig. Yet, this time, he knew it 
was not bad example, but just his own pig- 
gish nature which made him so fond of the 
mud. He had the pig cleaned again, and sat 
down to consider what he should do next. 
Presently, the fable says, a fairy appeared to 
the emperor, and, after hearing what was the 
trouble, said, " If you will give me the pig for 
a little while, I will make him hate dirt, and 
love to be clean." "Oh, do it, do it," said 
the emperor. So the fairy took the pig in 
his arms, and, opening his body, cut out his 
heart, and put a lamb's heart in its place. 
After this the emperor had no more trouble 
with his pet. The pig had now a lamb's 
heart. He was gentle, and loving, and clean 
as a lamb. He didn't want to roll in the 



THE WOISDEEFUL CHANGE. 205 

mud any longer. The things that he used to 
be fond of he was not fond of any more ; 
while he loved now things that before he 
didn't like at all. 

This is a good illustration of the impor- 
tance of this great change we are speaking 
of, — a change of heart. The Bible tells us that 
when our hearts are changed, and we become 
Christians, "Old things pass away, and all 
things become new." Suppose it were pos- 
sible for what we have spoken of in this par- 
able to take place, and for an animal like a 
pig, or a dog, or a wolf, to have his own 
heart taken away, and a lamb's heart put in 
the place of it, how strange it would be ! All 
his feelings would change. All the things 
that he liked and disliked would change. 
" Old things would pass away with him, and 
all things would become new." And it is 
just so with us when we become Christians. 
While we have sinful hearts, we can't do 
anything else than behave like sinful creat- 
ures. We can no more keep from com- 
mitting sin than the pig conld keep from 



206 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



running into the mud. But when Jesus 
changes our hearts and makes them holy and 
good like his, then like him we can be good 
and holy too. The first reason why this 
change is wonderful for its importance is 
that we canH he good without it. 

The second reason why it is wonderful for 
its importance is that we can't be happy 

WITHOUT IT. 

There are a great many unhappy people in 
the world, and only a few who are happy. 
All the people in the world may be divided 
into these two classes, — the unhappy and the 
happy. Now, I want to tell you two great 
secrets. Most people when they tell you a 
secret make you promise not to tell anybody 
else. But I don't want you to make me any 
such promise. You can talk about these two 
secrets that I am going to tell you as much 
as you please. The first of these secrets is 
about the unhappy people in the world. The 
secret I am going to tell you about them is 
the reason why they are unhappy. And it is 
a reason that refers to them all. You may 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 207 



travel all round the world, and wherever you 
find a man, or woman, a boy, or girl who is 
unhappy, this secret will show the reason why 
they are unhappy. Now, the secret of un- 
happiness, the great reason why people are 
unhappy is the want of something which they 
haven't got. You can try for yourselves now, 
and see if this is not the true reason why 
people are unhappy. I am very sure it will 
apply to every case that you can meet with. 
You will never find it fail. 

And now for the other secret. This refers 
to the happy people in the world. And the 
reason why they are happy is, they have got 
something that they wanted. This is the secret 
of being happy. And it applies to all happy 
people everywhere. You cannot find a hap- 
py person anywhere, but this will be the 
secret of his happiness. He has been want- 
ing something. The want of it made him 
unhappy ; but he has got it now, and getting 
it makes him happy. Here is a boy who is 
very happy. What is the secret of it ? Why, 
he has been wanting a pair of new skates for 



208 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



a long time. Now he has got what he wanted, 
and it makes him happy. Here is a girl who 
has long been wanting a new bonnet. She 
has been very unhappy because she couldn't 
get it. Now she has got it, and it makes 
her happy. And here is a man who has long 
been wanting to buy a new house, which has 
been for sale in his neighborhood. But he 
has not had money enough to buy it. This 
has made him unhappy. At last he has 
managed to get enough money. He has got 
the house, and it makes him happy. 

And now, perhaps some of you are ready 
to ask me a question. I have said that the 
second reason why this change, being born 
again, or having new hearts, is so important 
is that we can't be happy without it ; and yet 
I have been speaking of persons being made 
happy by such things as a new pair of skates, 
or a new bonnet, or a new house. You may 
ask me what I mean by this ? I'll tell you. 
When I say we can't be happy without a 
change of heart, I mean that we can't be truly 
happy ; we can't be happy forever. Will a 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 209 

new pair of skates make a boy happy for- 
ever? No. Will a new bonnet make a girl 
happy forever ? No . Will a new house make 
a man happy forever ? No. These things only 
make people happy for a little while. Then 
they get tired of them, and want something 
else ; and unless they get this thing, what- 
ever it is, they are unhappy again. And this 
is the way in which we go on through life. 
We get something that we wanted. It makes 
us happy for a little while. Then we get 
tired of it. We want something else, and 
are unhappy again. We never can be truly 
happy, or happy forever, till we have a friend 
who can give us everything that we need. But 
Jesus is the only one who can do this for us. 
Yet he won't do it till our hearts are changed, 
and we learn to love him. And this is the 
reason why I say that till our hearts are 
changed we can't be happy. Till Jesus is 
our friend there are sure to be a great many 
things that we want, but which we never can 
get ; and this must always prevent us from 
being happy. 

U 



210 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



Let me tell you about a little boy who was 
very unhappy once. His name was Walter. 
He lived in the country. One night his 
mother had put him to bed, and had gone 
downstaii^ to see some friends in the parlor. 
She thought he would be asleep in a few 
minutes. But Walter couldn't go to sleep 
that night. The curtain was drawn aside 
from the window, and through the opening he 
could see the stars. At other times he used 
to love to look at them, but now they seemed 
to look sadly on him. He heard the sound 
of the waterfall up by the old mill, and 
though he often said its murmuring was 
like music, and helped him to go to sleep, 
yet now it was like the voices of people 
talking low together about him, and he wished 
he could stop it. 

He turned his pillow over, and tried to 
arrange the quilt better, but it was of no use. 
He couldn't sleep. He had never been so 
uneasy on that bed before. ^Vhat was the 
matter ? There was a little tJiorn in his pillow. 
I don't mean one like those you have seen 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 211 



growing on thorn-bushes, but a kmd which 
gives more pain even than they can. He had 
been doing wrong that day. He had com- 
mitted a great sin ; and it was this which 
made him so unhappy. This was the thorn 
in his pillow. "I ought to tell mother," he 
said to himself, "but I don't want to." 

The waterfall kept on murmuring, and he 
thought he could almost hear something said 
about grapes and apples. The stars seemed 
to look in at the window still more sadly 
than before. Walter said again to himself, 
^^I ought to tell mother, and I will tell 
her." 

He got up from his bed, and went gently 
down the stairs. He tapped at the door and 
called his mother out. She came out, won- 
dering to find her little boy there, when she 
thought he was fast asleep. He said, " Mother, 
will you please come upstairs ? " As soon as 
they were back in the bedroom he said, 
" Mother, I'm very unhappy. I promised you 
I wouldn't take any more fruit at dinner-time ; 
but, after you left the table, I did take a 



212 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



bunch of grapes, and three apples, and hid 
them in my box in the nursery, and there 
they are now. I am very sorry, mother, and 
I want you to forgive me. I couldn't go to 
sleep because I had disobeyed you, and told 
a lie too." 

His mother laid her hand lovingly on his 
head, after this confession, and told him that 
she freely forgave him, and that she was glad 
he had not tried to hide his sin. This melted 
the poor boy down, and he threw his arms 
round his mother's neck, and wept upon her 
shoulder. Then he told her he knew that he 
had not only sinned against her, but against 
his best Friend, and he couldn't be happy 
unless Jesus forgave him too. So she kneeled 
down with him, and asked Jesus to forgive 
him, and to help him so that he should not 
sin again in this way. Then he felt happy, 
and soon fell asleep. 

Here, you see what the thorn in Walter's 
pillow was. It was the sin that he had com- 
mitted against his mother and against his 
Saviour. That was what made him so un- 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 213 

happy that he couldn't go to sleep. Now let 
us try this case by the rule that I gave you a 
little while ago. One of the two secrets that 
I gave you was, the reason why people are 
unhappy. I said it was the want of something 
which they haduH got. Walter was unhappy. 
Why ? He wanted something that he hadn't 
got. What was it? It wdi^ forgiveness. He 
wanted his mother to forgive him ; and he 
wanted his Saviour to forgive him. But 
after his mother had left him he was happy. 
And what was the secret of his happiness? 
He had got something that he wanted. So you 
see how both of the secrets I have given you 
apply to this case of Walter's. And you will 
find these two secrets apply, just in the same 
way, one of them to all the unhappy people 
in the world, and the other to all the happy 
people in it. Do you think Walter ever 
would have been happy if he hadn't got the 
forgiveness that he wanted? Never. That 
thorn would always have been in his pillow. 
It would have made him miserable all the 
time. 



214 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



And oh, how many people in the world 
are just like Walter in this respect ! They 
have a thorn in their jpillow. They know 
they are sinners. They want forgiveness. 
They haven't got it ; and this makes them 
unhappy. No one can give it to them but 
Jesus. He will only give it to them when 
they are sorry for their sins, and believe. 
But when they do this they are born again ; 
then* hearts are changed, and they are happy. 
And so I say the second reason for the won- 
derful importance of this change is, that we 
can't be happy without it. 

But there is a third reason for the wonder- 
ful importance of this change. It is this^ — 
WE can't go to heaven without it. 

And the reason is we are unfit. There are 
two kinds of unfitness for heaven about us 
until we are born again ; there is an outside 
unfitness and an inside unfitness. The out- 
side unfitness refers to our dress. The inside 
unfitness refers to our hearts. We can't go 
to heaven without this wonderful change, 
because om* dress is unfit. And when I 



THE WONDEEFUL CHANGE. 215 



speak of the dress that is unfit for heaven, I 
mean the dress of our souls^ and not of our 
bodies. You, and I, each one of us has a 
soul, and yet none of us ever saw a soul. 
We don't know how souls look, but we 
know that souls have dresses. For, when a 
door in heaven was opened to St. John, and 
he looked through it, he tells us that he saw 
the souls of those who had died and gone to 
heaven, and theyivere all clothed in aparticu^ 
lav hind of dress. And the Bible tells us 
that no one is ever allowed to enter heaven 
who is not clothed in that way. 

Suppose that you and I should go to Eng- 
land. While we are in London we hear 
that Queen Victoria is going to hold her 
court and have a grand reception day. On 
those days the queen puts on her royal robes 
and her sparkling crown ; and the nobility 
and the great people of the kingdom go in 
and are presented to the queen. Well, we 
make up our minds that we will go to this 
grand reception and see the queen and all 
the nobility. We get tickets of admission, 



216 



BIBLE WOIsHDERS. 



but we don't know anything about the rules 
of the court, and so we go in our common 
every-day dress. We go to the palace and 
ring the bell. An officer, all dressed in 
scarlet and gold, opens the door. We pre- 
sent our tickets. He looks at our dress, and 
says, "My friends, you can't go in." "Why 
not?" "Your dress is unfit. The law of 
the palace requires that every one who 
wishes to be presented to the queen must 
wear a particular kind of dress. It is called 
the court dress. On no account whatever can 
any one be aUoived to enter without having 
that dress on.^' This is the law at the palace 
of earthly monarchs. And there is just such 
a law in the heavenly palace, of which Jesus 
is the great king. A particular kind of 
dress is necessary before any one from our 
sinful world can be allowed to enter there. 
This dress consists of a beautiful robe that 
has been washed and made white in the 
"blood of the Lamb," Christ Jesus. These 
robes Jesus puts on the souls of his people 
when their hearts are changed, or when 



THE WONDEEFUL CHANGE. 217 

they are born again and become Christians. 
These white robes are the court dress of 
heaven. If our hearts have not been changed, 
then, instead of being clothed in this beautiful 
white dress, our souls can have no other 
clothing than "filthy rags." Just think how 
a poor beggar would look, if he were picked 
up from the gutter, with his ragged clothes 
all covered with mud, and were carried into 
the presence of Queen Victoria and her no- 
bility, on some grand court day ! How 
ashamed he would feel ! How everybody 
would try to get away from him ! The 
darkest cellar he could find would be pleas- 
anter to him than that bright and brilliant 
court-scene. And yet such a beggar would 
be much more fit to be introduced to the 
queen and her court, than anybody out of 
this sinful world will ever be to go into 
heaven until his heart is changed, and his 
soul is dressed in the white robe which Jesus 
puts on his people. Nobody can go into 
heaven without this. And this is the reason 
why Jesus said so positively, " Ye must be 



218 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



born again." We are all unfit to go to 
heaven till this wonderful change has taken 
place. There is an outside unfitness. The 
dress of our souls is unfit. 

And then there is an inside unfitness too. 
Our hearts are unfit, as well as our dress. 
Suppose we compare heaven to a great feast, 
where there is an abundance of all good 
things to eat and to drink. Suppose, also, 
that the chief happiness of the people admit- 
ted to that feast consisted in eating and 
drinking the good things that are there. 
And suppose that you and I are allowed to 
go in to the feast. But suppose that we are 
both sick, so that the sight of food, instead 
of being pleasant, is really painful to us ; 
should we be able to enjoy the feast? No ; 
we should be unfit for such enjoyment. 
There would be an inside unfitness in the 
state of our stomachs. A good appetite 
would be necessary to fit us for that enjoy- 
ment. 

Suppose, again, we compare heaven to a 
concert of sacred music. All who go into 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 219 



the concert are expected to take part in the 
singing, and all who do so find that it makes 
them perfectly happy. And suppose that 
you and I get tickets of admission to this 
concert. We get in, but both of us are deaf 
and dumb. We can neither sing a note, nor 
hear a sound. Could we enjoy the concert? 
Not in the least. We should be unfit for 
that enjoyment. There would be an inside 
unfitness that would spoil all our pleasure. 

Or suppose we think of heaven as a great 
family. Jesus is the head of the family. 
The happiness of the members of this family 
is found in loving and serving Jesus. Sup- 
pose that you and I are brought into this 
family, but we don't know Jesus. We don't 
love him ; we don't like to serve him. Should 
we be happy there? No. The state of our 
hearts and feelings would make us unfit to 
be happy there. It would be an inside un- 
fitness. And so you see how true it is that 
till our hearts are changed we can't go to 
heaven. There are two great difficulties in 
the way. One of these is an outside diffi- 



220 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



culty ; the other is an inside difficulty. The 
want of a proper dress is the outside diffi- 
culty. The want of proper feelings is the 
inside difficulty. These difficulties must be 
removed before we can go to heaven. But 
this can only be done by getting our hearts 
changed. And this is the reason why Jesus 
said, "Ye must be born again." 

This is a wonderful change. It is won- 
derful for its importance. Three things 
show us how wonderfully important it is. 

The first is, that ive canH be good without 
it. The second is, that ice can't he happy 
without it. The third is, that ive can't go to 
heaven ivithout it. 

My dear young friends, this gTcat change 
is so wonderful in its importance that we 
ought to attend to it at once. Before we 
eat, or drink, or sleep, or do an}i:hing else, 
we ought to tr}^ and get this change made in 
our hearts. This was what Jesus meant 
when he said, " Seek first the kingdom of 
God." Never forget these three can'ts. Un- 
til our hearts are changed and made new, 



THE WO^STDEKFUL CHANGE. 221 

we cavbt he good; we canH he happy; we 
can't go to heaven. Then let us begin at once 
and try to get this change made. We can't 
change our own hearts. We can't change 
each other's hearts. But Jesus can change 
them. 

There is truth in one of the hymns we 
sometimes sing, which says : — 

" ' Tis thine, almighty Saviour, thine 
To form the heart anew,^^ 

The prayer that King David offered on 
this subject suits us all. He said, " Create 
in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a 
right spirit within me." If we offer that 
prayer aright, Jesus will hear us. He will 
change our wicked hearts. We shall be 
born again. We shall feel the wonderful 
importance of this change when we find that 
by the help he gives us we can be good ; we 
can be happy ; and we can go to heaven and 
be fit to share in all its joys. 

" Ye must be born again ! " 



VIII. 

"gje must ir^ haxn again." 

John iii. 7. 



yiii. 



mmt ha hoxn agam/* — fol^n in. Z. 

It is a wonderful change that Jesus was 
speaking about to Mcodemus, when he 
spoke these words. In our last sermon we 
spoke of it as wonderful for its importance. 
We spoke of three things which show its 
importance. The first was that we can!t he 
good loithout it. The second was, we cavbt he 
happy without it. The third was, we canHgo 
to heaven without it. 

Now let us look at another thing about 
this change on account of which it is wonder- 
ful, and that is its effects. Some changes 
take place that are not followed by any par- 
ticular effects. For example, suppose that 
you and I had been born in England. Then 
we should have been -subjects of Queen 
Victoria. If we had made up our minds to 
come over to America, and live in this coun- 

15 225 



226 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



try, then we should have become citizens of 
the United States. That would be a great 
change, in some respects. It would be a 
change of country, and a change of our home, 
or place of living ; but no particular effect 
would follow from it. We should probably 
pursue the same kind of business in one 
country as in the other. We should have 
the same feelings and characters, and be 
just the same kind of persons, in the one 
country as in the other. But then other 
changes take place that are followed by very 
great effects. It is a great change when 
winter passes away, and spring comes ; and 
the effects that follow it are very great. In 
winter the skies are cloudy, and the days are 
dark. Fierce winds blow; heavy storms 
rage ; and ice, and snow, and frost prevail. 
The trees are bare ; the birds that used to 
sing among their branches have disappeared ; 
the gardens are stripped of their flowers ; the 
fields are brown ; the ground is hard, and 
the streams are frozen over. But when 
spring comes on, the effects that follow it 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 227 

are very surprising. The days are length- 
ened out ; the skies are bright ; the winds die 
away; the storms are hushed; the sun 
waxes warm ; and the ice and snow all melt 
away before it. The grass springs up ; the 
flowers come out ; the trees put forth their 
beautiful green leaves again, and everything 
looks fresh and bright. This illustrates the 
effects which follow when our hearts are 
changed, and we are born again. And Solo- 
mon makes use of this very figure of the 
change of seasons, from winter to spring, in 
order to show the effects which follow when 
our hearts are changed and we are born 
again, and become Christians. And this is 
what he means when he says, "The rain 
is over and gone ; the flowers appear in the 
earth; the time of the singing of birds is 
come ; and the voice of the turtle is heard in 
the land." 

Now, all that I wish to do, in this sermon, 
is to give you some illustrations of the effects 
which follow when this great change takes 
place. It is wonderful in its effects. And 



228 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



ill seeking for our illustrations of this subject 
let us suppose that we were taking a walk 
together. We will suppose that it is Mon- 
day, or Tuesday, or any other day in the 
week except Sunday. To find our illustra- 
tions we will go among some of our mechan- 
ics, or working people, and in the works in 
which they are engaged, or in the trades 
they are carrying on, we shall find several 
things that will illustrate the effects that fol- 
low in the characters and lives of people 
when they are born again, or become Chris- 
tians. 

And the first place to which we go for an 
illustration is a machine-shop. I mean by 
this a place where they make locomotives, 
or steam engines. 

Here we find an old locomotive. It is off 
the track, standing with the wheels sunk in 
the ground. A locomotive off the track is 
good for nothing. It can't go on the 
ground. There is a grate, or fireplace, in 
this locomotive, but there is no fire in it. 
The strong iron arm, or crank, that moves 



THE WONDEEFUL CHANGE. 229 

what are called the driving-wheels, is broken. 
It is that arm or rod keeps the wheels in 
motion, and makes the engine go. The 
boiler of the locomotive is bnrst, so that it 
won't hold any steam. Now, a locomotive in 
this condition would be a good illustration 
of what our condition is before we become 
Christians. The engine is off the rails, — 
the iron track, on which it was intended to 
run. This track represents the path of 
obedience to God's commands. That is the 
track along which God intended that we 
should move. But we don't obey God until 
our hearts are changed and we are born 
again. In that respect, therefore, we are just 
like a locomotive that has been run off the 
track. The fire has gone out in the grate, 
or fireplace, of this locomotive. The fire in 
an engine is that on which all its move- 
ments depend. Steam is what moves the 
machinery, and fire is what makes the steam. 
And just what the fire is to an engine the 
Holy Spirit is to our souls. But while we 
are living in sin the Holy Spirit will not 



230 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



dwell in our hearts. And a heart without 
the Holy Spirit dwelling in it is just like the 
grate of an engine without any fire in it. 

And then look at the driving-wheels of 
our old locomotive. The strong iron rod, or 
crank, which moves them, and so makes the 
whole engine go, is broken. But while that 
rod is broken the engine is of no use. The 
wheels can't be made to go. That iron 
rod, which moves the wheels in the loco- 
motive, represents the will in our souls. 
Just as that rod moves the wheels of the en- 
gine, and makes all the machinery go, so our 
will is the thing that makes us act, and keeps 
us in motion. You know the old saying is 
that " where there's a will there's a wayJ^ 
K you have no will to a thing you can't do 
it. But sin has taken away our will to serve 
God. And so, till our hearts are changed, 
and we are born again, we are just like a 
locomotive which has the rod to the driving- 
wheels broken. It can't work. 

But look again at this old locomotive. 
The boiler is burst. It can hold no steam. 



THE WONDEEFUL CHANGE. 231 



But steam in a locomotive is what does 
all the work. And the thing in the heart of 
a Christian, which the steam in a locomotive 
represents, is the love of Christ. This is 
what* St. Paul means when he says, speak- 
ing of Christians, "The love of Christ con- 
strainetJi us." He meant to say that the love 
of Christ, in the hearts of Christians, is the 
thing that stirs them up to do whatever he 
wants to have them do. But until we are 
born again, and our hearts are made new, 
there is no love of God in them. In this re- 
spect they are like a locomotive with a 
boiler that can hold no steam. And now, 
suppose that, while we are visiting this ma- 
chine-shop, the owner, or head workman, 
takes the old locomotive in hand to repair it 
all through. He puts a new boiler in it. 
He has a new iron rod, or crank, fastened to 
the driving-wheels. He takes away from 
the engine everjrthing that is broken or out 
of order. He has the locomotive set fairly 
on the track again. He starts a fire in the 
grate. The water is put into the boiler, and 



232 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



pretty soon there is a full supply of steam on 
hand. It is a great change which has taken 
place in this locomotive. And the effects of 
that change are wonderful. And this is a 
change just like that which takes places, in us 
when we are born again. And we see the 
effects of this change illustrated in the re- 
sults which have followed to the locomotive. 
The engine is on the track again. So when 
our hearts are changed we are put in the way 
of obeying God. We are put upon the track 
of obedience to his commandments. A fire 
is kindled ao'ain in the OTate of the eno^ine. 
And so when our hearts are changed the 
Holy Spirit causes them to burn with the 
love of God. And as that fire, kindled in 
the engine, soon raises the steam that is 
necessary to start the machinery and keep 
it in motion, so the love of God in our 
hearts stirs us up to serve God and do all 
that he wants us to do. And as when the 
steam is let on from the boiler, the new 
strong iron rod on the driving-wheels makes 
them go round and keeps them going, so 



THE WONDERFUL, CHANGE. 233 



when we become Christians God gives ns a 
will to serve him. He makes us not only 
willing^ but glad, to be his loving friends and 
followers. It is a great change which takes 
place in us when we are born again. The 
effects are wonderful. We get our first 
illustration of this from our visit to the 
machine-shop, when we see an old loco- 
motive, that had been run off the track, 
because it was useless, put on the track 
again, with its broken wheel mended, a full 
head of steam on, ready, as soon as the sig- 
nal is given, to start off at full speed, and fly 
along the road, drawing the long train of 
cars after it. The old locomotive, in the 
machine-shop, is our first illustration. 

And now we will leave the machine-shop, 
and seek for another illustration of the won- 
derful effects that follow from a change of 
heart, or from being born again. The second 
place that we go to for an illustration is A 

SHIP-YARD. 

This is a place in which ships are built. 
New ships are made here, and old ships that 



234 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



have been wrecked and injured by storms, 
or decayed by the water, or eaten by the 
worms, are repaired and made fit for use 
again. We walk down through the yard 
towards the river. There is a dock there. 
In this dock there is the wreck of a vessel. 
It is what the sailors call " an old hulk." It 
was once a splendid new vessel. But it has 
been on a long voyage to the East Indies. 
The worms got into her timbers, as they 
often do in that warm climate. She encoun- 
tered a terrible storm in which she was 
almost lost. And now that old hulk, as she 
lies in the dock, is a good representation of 
the state of our souls before we are born 
again. Look at her. Her masts are broken. 
Her timbers are rotten. Her planks are 
worm-eaten. Some of them look just like 
pieces of a honeycomb. Her sails are torn 
to rags. Her rigging is all down. Her 
rudder is lost. Her seams (that is, the 
spaces between her planks) are all gaping. 
The water would run through them as it 
does throuo;h a sieve. She is not fit to go 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 



235 



to sea. She lies in the dock, of no use to 
any one. 

But the ship-carpenter has received orders 
to repair this old wreck and make her fit for 
sea again. So he puts her in the dry dock. 
This is a dock out of which the water can be 
taken, and in which a vessel can be propped 
up, so as to stand upright without any water 
about her, so that the workmen can get at 
any part of her, and do whatever may be 
needed. The carpenter takes out all the 
rotten timbers, and all the worm-eaten 
planks, and puts new ones in their places. 
He puts new masts in her, new rigging, new 
yards, and new sails. He has a new rudder 
made and put in place of the old one. He has 
her calked all over, — that is, the openings 
between her planks are all filled up tight, so 
that no water can get in. Then he has her 
coppered, — that is, the bottom of the vessel, 
or the outside part of her, which goes in the 
water, is all covered with sheets of copper. 
These are nailed tight on, so as to keep the 
worms from getting into the wood. Then 



236 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



she is painted all over, and looks like a new 
vessel. She is ready to go to sea now, and 
is just as good as a new vessel. 

Now, it is a great change which has taken 
place in this vessel. And we have here a 
good illustration of the change which takes 
place in us, when we are born again. When 
we look at a vessel like this we are speaking 
of, it is a sort of figure or image of oiu^selves. 
Our habits and tempers are like the timbers 
and planks of the vessel. Our will is like 
the rudder that guides and steers the vessel. 
Our desires or longings after God and heaven 
are like the sails which catch the winds, and 
so make the ship move along through the 
water. And a vessel that has been wecked 
by storms and made unfit for sea, like the 
old hulk that we were just speaking of, 
shows the effect of sin on our souls, and is a 
good representation of what our condition is 
before we become Christians. Then we 
have bad habits and tempers, and these are 
like the rotten timbers and worm-eaten 
planks in the old hulk. Our stubborn wills 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 237 

are not able to guide us in the way in Ayhicli 
God wants us to go, and so we are like a 
ship without a rudder. We have no love 
for God, and no desire to go to heaven 
where he is, and on this account we are like 
a ship whose sails have been torn to rags. 
But when God takes us in hand, as the car- 
penter did the old wreck, and causes us to 
be born again, a great change takes place in 
us. As St. Paul says, "Old things pass 
away, and all things become new." This 
change is wonderful in its effects^ just as it 
was when the old hulk was turned into a 
new vessel. When God changes our hearts, 
he gives us gentle, loving tempers, such as 
Jesus had ; and this is like putting sound 
timbers in place of the rotten ones in an old 
wreck. When God changes our hearts, he 
gives us a will to serve him and do all that 
he wants us to do ; and this is like putting a 
new rudder to a vessel that couldn't be 
steered because the rudder was broken. 
When God changes our hearts, he makes us 
love him above all things. Then we have 



238 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



longing desires to go to heaven, and these 
desires are like new sails to a vessel, that 
will catch the wind and carry it home to 
the harbor. 

Now, suppose that while we are still 
standing on the wharf in the dock-yard, we 
see two boys come down there. They are 
both going to sea ; but they are going in 
very different vessels. One is going in a 
vessel that has just been refitted and made 
new, while the other is going in an old 
wreck that is not fit to go to sea. Which of 
these two boys might we expect would get 
along the best ? The one in the new vessel. 
What would you expect to hear about the 
other? That he was lost at sea. 

Now, let me tell you about two boys. 
Some years ago, there was a teacher in one 
of the large villages in the West, who had 
two boys in his school. One of them was 
named Nathan Smith, and the other John 
Wilder. They were then about twelve years 
of age. They were both in the same class ; 
both the children of poor parents, and so 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 



239 



would have to work for their own living. 
They were both clever scholars, and were 
pretty, well-behaved boys. Neither of them 
had any particular natural advantage over 
the other. There seemed to be no special 
reason why one of them should not get on 
as well in the world as the other ; but they 
turned out very differently. 

That teacher left the school, and removed 
to a distant part of the country. He lost 
sight of those two boys. He never heard 
anything of them for twenty years. Then 
he went to church one Sunday. A young 
man was ordained to the ministry on that day. 
The teacher thought there was something 
about that young man which made him feel 
that he had seen him before. After the ser- 
vice was over he went up to speak with him, 
when, to his great surprise and joy, he found 
it was one of his old scholars, Nathan Smith. 
They had a long talk about old times, and 
the different persons they both knew, in 
connection with that school. 

" And now pray tell me, Nathan," said the 



240 



BIBLE WO^sTDERS. 



old teacher, " what has become of your for- 
mer classmate, John Wilder?" 

The smile that was playing over Nathan's 
face passed off, in a moment, at the mention 
of that name. He looked very grave, and 
sighed heavily as he said : — 

"Poor John! His history is a very sad 
one. He wouldn't mind his parents. He 
quit going to church or Sunday school. He 
fell into bad company. He learned to play 
cards. He became a regular gambler. Some 
months ago, with two other young men like 
himself, he killed a man to get his money. 
He was tried, found guilty, and condemned 
to death. He is now a prisoner in the peni- 
tentiary, and on next Friday he is to he hung.^^ 
Here were these two boys, who used to sit, 
side by side, on the same bench, — one of 
them is ordained on a certain Sunday to be a 
minister of Christ, and preach his precious 
gospel ; while his schoolmate and com- 
panion is to be hung, as a murderer, on the 
following Friday. And see what it was 
which led to this great difference in the 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 241 

history of those two boys. Nathan Smith 
was born again. His heart was changed. He 
learned to love the Saviour. He was like 
the boy who went to sea in a new ship, 
strong and sound. No wonder that he did 
well, and had a successful voyage. John 
Wilder was not willing to become a Christian. 
He would not pray earnestly to Jesus to give 
him a new heart, and help him to be his faith- 
ful servant and follower. He w^as like the 
boy who went to sea in the old wrecked hulk. 
No wonder he came to so sad an end. My 
dear boys and girls, if you grow up to be 
men and women, and go out into the world, 
without having your hearts changed, you will 
be like sailors who go to sea in a wrecked 
vessel, that has sprung aleak, and has her 
masts broken, and her rudder lost. You 
may not come to the gallows, as John Wilder 
did, but it is just as certain as the sun rises 
in the east, and sets in the west, that you will 
never be safe, and never be happy, and never 
get to heaven. Our second illustration is 
from the old wreck in the ship-yard. 
16 



242 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



Now we have got through with our visit 
here. Let us leave the ship-yard. We must 
have one more illustration. If there had been 
time we might have taken two or three more. 
I should like to have gone with you to the 
silversmith's. We might have seen him take 
a quantity of old silver. There are cups, and 
bowls, and spoons ; but they look very ugly. 
They are all blackened, and bent, and bat- 
tered, and broken. He puts them into the 
furnace, and melts them, and presently out 
of that melted silver he makes a new tea-set, 
shining, and bright, and beautiful, — fit for 
the table of a king. 

Then I should like to have gone with you 
to the watchmaker's. He shows us a watch, 
the works of which are all covered with 
rust, and the main-spring broken. It won't 
go. It is of no use. But he cleans the rust 
all off from the works. He puts a new 
main-spring in it. And now it goes, and 
keeps time, and is as good as a new watch. 

And then I should like to have taken you 
to a paper-mill. Here, in one room, we see 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 243 



a lot of old rags. They are in little pieces, 
too small to be used even for patchwork. But 
they are thrown into the mill, and ground 
very fine, and mixed with water, till they 
look like pulp, or thickened milk; and 
present^ we see it turned off upon a roller 
in the shape of beautiful, clean, white paper, 
just the thing for writing or drawing on. 
These are all great changes, and the effects 
that follow from them are wonderful. And 
we see, in these different trades that men 
pursue, illustrations of the wonderful effects 
that follow our lives and characters when 
our hearts are changed. 

But now let us look for our third and last 
illustration. We must go into a garden to 
find this. A grafted tree is the illustration 
we are now looking for. At the lower end 
of this garden are several apple-trees. Some 
of them bear good, nice, juicy apples. But 
one of them bears apples so poor that they 
are not fit to use. The gardener can't make 
up his mind what to do with this tree. Some- 
times he thinks he will cut it down. Again 



244 



BIBLE WONDEKS. 



he feels inclined to tiy the effect of grafting 
npon it. At last he concludes to make this 
trial. So he cuts off the principal branches 
of the bad old tree. Then he gets a twig 
from one of the best trees in his orchard. 
He shaves down carefully one end of this slip. 
Then he makes a slit in the end of one of 
the branches of the bad tree. Into this slit 
he puts the end of the twig from the good 
tree. He works it gently in, as far as he 
wants it to go. Then he gets some of the 
soil of the garden, Avets it till it becomes like 
thick mud, and makes a sort of plaster out of 
it. This he spreads all round the end of the 
branch, into which the twig from the good 
apple-tree has been put, and fastens it on 
with a bandage. He keeps this moistened 
with water for a good while. At last the 
twig grows into the branch of the bad tree, 
to which it had been fastened, and becomes 
a part of it. And then a great change takes 
place in that tree. The effect of this change 
is seen in the kind of fruit that it bears. 
These are not like the fruit of the bad old 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 245 

tree, into which the graft has been made, but 
like the fruit of the good tree, from which 
the twig was taken that has been grafted into 
the old tree. This is a great change, and it 
is wonderful in its effects. 

Let me tell you a story about grafting. 
There was a gentleman, living in the State 
of New York, who had two sons. Tiie elder 
was named George and the younger Charles. 
This gentleman had a garden connected with 
his house. Down at the end of the garden, 
growing out of the hedge there and overhang- 
ing the lane, was a crab-apple tree. It bore 
plenty of fruit ; and when ripe the fruit looked 
very good, but it was as sour as vinegar 
to the taste. George and Charley used to 
have a good deal of fun out of this old crab- 
apple tree. When they had their young 
friends visiting them, they would often take 
them down to the end of the garden, at the 
season when apples were ripe, and, plucking 
off some of the best-looking apples from the 
old tree, would ask them if they didn't want 
a nice rosy apple. The boys were ready 



246 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



enough to take them. They would eagerly 
take a good big bite, and George and Charley 
would have a good hearty laugh, when they 
saw the ^yvy faces the boys would make as they 
threw down the apples, and tried to get rid of 
the dreadfid bitter taste left in their mouths. 

After a while the father of these boys died. 
They grew up to be young men. George 
remained at home, and carried on his father's 
business. Charles moved out to the West, 
and entered into business for himself there. 
In making some improvements about the 
garden George concluded to have the old 
crab-apple tree grafted. He got a slip from 
one of the finest trees in the neighborhood, 
called "the golden pippin." The apples it 
bore were fine, large, juicy ones, that would 
make your mouth water to look at them. 
The grafting took very well ; and now every 
year the old crab-apple tree was yielding a 
fine crop of splendid golden pippins. 

Well, after some years Charles came 
home, on a visit to his brother George. It 
was very pleasant to him to get back to the 



THE WONDERFUL, CHANGE. 247 

dear old home once more. Many a long 
talk he and George had together over all 
that had taken place since they last met. 
George showed him all the alterations and 
improvements he had made about the house. 
Then he took him out into the garden to 
show him the changes that had been made 
there. As they were walking quietly up 
and down the paths, George asked Charley 
if he remembered the old crab-apple tree 
and the fun they used to have with it. 

" To be sure I do," said Charley. " I never 
see the word crab-apple without thinking of 
it. Is the old tree standing yet, George ? " 

"Yes," said he ; and then he led the con- 
versation off to something else, while they 
went walking along. Presently, without 
Charley's seeing it, George plucked off one 
of the finest pippins from this tree and gave 
it to him. It was fully ripe, — a perfect 
beauty. Charley was feeling thirsty, and 
just in a condition to enjoy it. As soon as 
he had taken the first mouthful, he smacked 
his lips over it, and said : — 



248 



BIBLE WOISTDERS. 



"Why, George, my dear fellow, I declare 
this is the nicest apple I ever tasted. There 
didn't use to be any such apples here ; do tell 
me where it came from." 

"It came from the old crab-apple tree," 
said George ; and, pointing to the tree, he 
said, " See, there it is, — full of them." 

Charley had never given any attention to 
gardening work, and so with great surprise 
he said, " That's a wonderful change, George ; 
tell me how it was done." 

" Ghrafting did it, Charley," said George. 

That grafted tree in the garden is a good 
illustration of what we are talking about. 
It is a great change that takes place when we 
become Christians, and wonderful in its 
effects. Nothing represents this better than 
grafting. K we compare a person to a tree, 
then the words he speaks, the actions he 
performs, and the tempers he shows, are like 
the fruit that grows on the tree. Before we 
become Christians we are like crab-apple 
trees. All that we do is sinful in the 
sight of God. All the fruit we bear is sour, 



THE WONDERFUL CHANGE. 249 

like the crab-apples. But when we are born 
again, our hearts are changed, and we are 
like the tree that has been grafted from a 
good stock. And then, as St. Paul says, we 
"have our fruit unto holiness, and the end 
everlasting life." 

Now, we have had three illustrations of the 
great change to which our Saviour referred 
when he said, " Ye must be born again ; 
and all these illustrations show us how won- 
derful in its effects this change is. 

The first of these illustrations is the old 
locomotive in the machine-shop. The second 
is the old ii^veek in the ship-yard. The third 
is the grafted tree in the garden. 

My dear young friends, I have preached 
these two sermons on the subject of this 
wonderful change, in the hope that you may 
remember something that has been said, and 
may try to get your own hearts changed. 
This is the most important thing you will 
ever have to attend to. And the great im- 
portance of this change is just the reason 
why Jesus said so earnestly to Nicodeinus, 



250 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



"Ye must be born again." There are a great 
many things that we think are important, but 
we learn, by and by, that we can do without 
them. 

There was a gentleman once who was very 
fond of studying botany. He had made a 
collection of specimens of curious plants and 
flowers. He used to spend all his leisure 
time in arranging and fixing them, — in read- 
ing about them, and making drawings of 
them. One night, while he was away from 
home, his house took fire, and burnt down. 
His whole collection of beautiful specimens 
was destroyed. Shortly after, a friend, who 
knew how much his heart had been set on 
that collection, met him in the street, and 
asked him what he was going to do, now that 
he had lost it? He quietly said, "I'm going 
to do without itJ^ That was a very wise 
answer. It is a great lesson to learn to do 
without things. And it is sm^prising how many 
things we can do without. We can do without 
fine clothes. We can do without large houses, 
and handsome furniture. We can do with- 



THE WONDEEFUL CHANGE. 251 

out horses and carriages. We can do with- 
out much money. We can do without our 
friends and relations. We can do without 
even our parents; for David says, "When 
my father and mother forsake me, then 
the Lord will take me up." We can do with- 
out our hands and feet, our eyes and ears ; 
for hundreds of persons have lost these, and 
yet have managed to get on. We can do 
without our health ; for multitudes have been 
without it for years, and yet have been happy. 
But oh, remember, we cannot do loithout Jesus, 
and the new heart that he gives 1 Don't try to 
do without him. Eemember what was said 
in our last sermon. You can't be good with- 
out these. You can't be happy without them. 
You can't go to heaven without them. Pray 
earnestly to Jesus to make you his friend, 
and give you a heart to love and serve 
him. Then you will have the secret of 
true happiness, and as the hymn says you 
will be 

" Prepared for lengtii of days, 
Or fit for early death." 



IX. 



Genesis ii. 12. 



IX. 



« golb of ll^at Imxis m goob." — §mzm iu 12. 

Every one knows what gold is. The 
land here spoken of was called "the land 
of Havilah." This was a country far away 
in Asia, near the garden of Eden, in which 
God put our first parents, when they were 
created. In the chapter from which these 
words are taken this garden is described. 
Nobody in the world now ever saw it. No- 
body knows even exactly where it was. But 
we know it was very beautiful. There were 
no thorns or briers, no ugly weeds or poi- 
sonous reptiles found there. Every sight 
was beautiful. Every sound was pleasant. 
Every flower was fragrant ; and all the fruit 
growing there was wholesome and good. 
What a blessed, happy place it must have 
been ! Who would not like to have lived 

255 



256 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



there? And there was gold, too, in Eden; 
yes, and "the gold of that land was good." 

Now, we never can enter that garden. 
But there is a better one than that, which we 
may enter. The garden in which Adam first 
lived, and which we call Eden, or Paradise, 
was the figure, or image, of heaven. In the 
first two chapters of the Bible we read all 
that we know about that earthly paradise 
which Adam lost for us. And in the last 
two chapters of the Bible we read nearly all 
that we know about the heavenly paradise 
which Jesus has gained for those who love 
him, and which will be their home forever. 
And many of the very same things will be 
found in this heavenly paradise which were 
in the earthly paradise. The tree of life was 
in the earthly paradise, and it will be in the 
heavenly paradise too. Blest streams of 
crystal water were in the earthly paradise, 
and there will be the same in the heavenly 
paradise also. Fine gold was found in the 
earthly paradise, and there will be fine gold 
likewise in the heavenly paradise ; and oh, 



9 

THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 257 

"^the gold of that land is good." When St. 
John had seen it, he said it was ^^pure gold, 
like unto dear glass You look at the crys- 
tal that covers the face of a watch, and you 
can see the hands and the figures on the 
dial-face just as well as though there were 
no glass there. That is what we mean when 
we say that glass is transparent; we can see 
through it. And if the golden case of a 
watch were like glass ; if it were just as 
hard, and as strong, and as bright, and as 
shining as it is, and yet were "clear like 
glass, — that is, if it were transparent, — so 
that we could see through it, just as well as 
we do through the glass over the face of the 
watch; how beautiful and how wonderful 
that gold would be ! St. John says that this 
is the kind of gold he saw in heaven. The 
gold of heaven means the grace of God. And, 
if anybody wants me to prove this, it is easy 
enough to do so. Jesus himself speaks of 
his grace as gold, when he says, "I counsel 
thee to buy of me gold tried in fire, that 
thou mayest be rich." (Kev. iii. 18.) ^'Gold 

17 



258 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



tried in the fire," here, nieans the grace of 
God. And so, if we take "the land of 
Hayilah " spoken of in our text as represent- 
ing heaven, and if we take the gold of heaven 
as representing the grace of God, then we 
may very well point up to heaven and say, 
" The gold of that land is good." And then 
we may put this good gold on the cata- 
logue of the " Bible Wonders." The gold of 
heaven is ivonderful gold. 

There are three things about this gold 
which show that it is wonderful. And these 
three things are all connected with the word 
getting. In the first place ^ the way of get- 
ting this gold is wonderfid. 

People sometimes have to go a great dis- 
tance in order to get earthly gold. When 
the gold mines in California were first dis- 
covered, there was a great rush of people 
from all parts of this country, who wanted to 
go out there and get gold. Some went by 
sea, all the way round Cape Horn. That 
was a long, cold, stormy, disagreeable, and 
dangerous voj^age to take. But they were 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 259 



going for gold, and they cared nothing for 
the length of the journey they had to take in 
getting it. Other people went in wagons, 
or on foot across the country. It is more 
than two thousand miles' distance from here. 
What a long way that is to travel ! But 
they were going for gold, and that made 
them willing. But the wonderful thing 
about the heavenly gold is, that no long 
journey is necessary in order to get it. It 
is not stored up, like earthly gold, in mines 
which can only be found in particular places. 
It is to be found in all countries. It may be 
had in all places. The church is a good 
place in which to seek it. So is the Sunday 
school. So is the room in which you sleep 
at night. In garrets, in cellars, in barns, 
and in the quiet woods, men, and women, 
and children, have sought and found this 
heavenly gold. The soldier in his tent on 
the field of battle, and the sailor in the cold, 
dark forecastle of the vessel, or out upon the 
yard-arm, while the wind was howling and 
the tempest bursting around him, has sought 



260 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



and found this gold. Men go a great dis- 
tance to find the earthly gold ; but the 
heavenly gold may be found anywhere. 
Wherever you are you may get this gold, 
if you try in the right way. 

But, besides going a great distance, men 
often have to meet great dangers before they 
can get the earthly gold they are seeking. 
Some of those people who went round by sea 
to California to get gold met with terrible 
storms. Some of them were shipwrecked 
and lost their lives on the way. And those 
who went by land met with great dangers 
too. Some of them lost their way in the 
desert plains which they had to travel over. 
Some got out of provisions and suffered 
dreadfully from hunger and thirst. Some 
were robbed by the Indians. Some were 
overtaken by terrible storms of snow when 
they were crossing the mountains. Their 
hands and feet were frost-bitten, and many 
perished on the plains and on the mountains, 
from hunger, and cold, and sickness. But 
there is no exposure to danger in seeking 



THE WONDEEFUL GOLD. 261 

the heavenly gold. At home, among those 
who love you best, you may seek it and find 
it. And no one can hinder or hurt you in 
doing this. 

In getting earthly gold men not only have 
to go a great distance, and meet great dan- 
gers, but often they have to jpay a great 
"price to get it. Gehazi, the servant of Eli- 
sha, lost his situation with that good master ; 
he lost his health too, and became a misera- 
ble leper, all his days, whom no one could 
cure, in order to get a little gold. That was 
a great price to pay for it. Judas Iscariot 
sold his Master for a little money. Oh, 
what a tremendous price that was to pay for 
it ! Benedict Arnold sold his country for a 
poor, paltry sum of gold. He stamped his 
name with the dark, dishonorable stain of a 
traitor^ for a little gold. How great a price 
he paid for it ! Some men are willing to 
pay any price for earthly gold. Look at the 
whalers. They are willing to go from home 
for two or three years at a time. They will 
sail up into the cold and stormy North Sea, 



262 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



or Frozen Ocean. They will run the risk of 
being crushed to death between jarring ice- 
bergs ; or of being frozen up in the North 
all winter ; they will meet with all sorts of 
trials and hardships in order to get a . little 
gold. This is the great price they are will- 
ing to pay for it. But nothing of this kind 
is necessary in order to get the heavenly 
gold. Jesus counsels us to hiiy this gold of 
him. He is the only one from whom it can 
be had. But the way in Avhich Jesus sells 
this gold is very wonderful. If you go to a 
broker's office, and want to buy some gold, 
you will have to pay for it in other kind of 
money just as much as the gold is worth. 
If you want fifty or a hundred dollars in 
gold, you must pay the value of that much 
gold in good bank-notes, or other money. 
That is the way in which men sell gold. 
But Jesus sells the heavenly gold, which he 
invites us to buy of him, in a very different 
way from this. And it is well for us that he 
does. For if we could only get this gold by 
paying the price it is worth, we should never 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 263 



get it at all. The least amount of this gold 
is worth so much that all the money in the 
world would not be enough to buy it. Then 
what is the use of Jesus asking us to "buy" 
this gold of him? There is great use in it, 
because of the wonderful way in which he 
sells this gold. He shows us what this way 
is, in another place, when he tells us to 
"come, and buy wine and milk, without 
money and without price. (Isaiah Iv. 1.) 
The " wine and milk " spoken of in one of 
these passages, and the "gold" spoken of in 
the other, all mean the same thing. They 
refer to the grace of God. Jesus sells this 
"without money and without price." This 
means that he lets poor sinners, such as we 
are, have it free. He makes no charge. 
He asks no price. He gives it to them for 
nothing. What a strange way this is of sell- 
ing that heavenly gold which is more valua- 
ble than anything else in the world ! 

Some years ago a young officer was 
making a visit at the house of a good minis- 
ter, who had a church in a little country 



264 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



village^ in England. One evening, while he 
was there, the minister was going out to 
attend a cottage meeting among some of the 
poor people of his church. The young offi- 
cer asked if he might go with him, and he 
went. During the meeting, the minister 
read this passage of Scripture about buying 
gold from Jesus. He told them how valua- 
ble this gold is ; how rich it makes those 
who have it, because it will get them all 
they want for their souls both now and for- 
ever, in this world and in the world to come. 
Then he told them how freely Jesus sells 
this gold, "without money and without 
price." The young officer was not a Chris- 
tian. He had never heard the gospel preached 
in this way before. He thought it very 
strange. On his way home he told the min- 
ister it was silly nonsense to talk about buy- 
ing a thing that was really valuable, without 
paying anything for it. He laughed and 
made sport of it. The minister only pitied 
him and prayed for him. 

Soon after, the young man joined the regi- 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 2G5 

ment to which he belonged and went out to 
India. One day, several years after this, 
the minister received a letter from India. 
It was from a friend of the young officer, 
and gave an account of his death. He was 
taken ill with the fever. He soon found 
that he was going to die. But he felt that 
he was not ready for death. His soul was 
poor. It wanted everything to fit him for 
heaven. But what could he do? He re- 
membered that cottage meeting. All that 
the good minister had said about the heavenly 
gold that makes the soul rich, and that 
Jesus sells "without money and without 
price," came afresh into his mind. He said 
to himself, "This is just what I need, and it 
is the only way in which I can get it." He 
went to Jesus in earnest prayer. He bought 
from him the heavenly gold " without money 
and without price." It made him rich. He 
died a peaceful, happy death. But before 
he died, he got his friend who nursed him to 
promise that he would write to the good 
minister, to ask his pardon for the sinful way 



266 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



ill which he had spoken of the words he had 
heard in the cottage meeting that night ; to 
thank him for those words, and to tell him 
that, far away in India, they had been the 
means of leading him to Jesus, and of sav- 
ing his soul from death. 

In getting earthly gold men often have to 
go great distances^ to meet great dangers, and 
to pay great prices. But it is different with 
the heavenly gold. The first thing about 
this which makes it wonderful is the way of 
getting it. 

The second thing that is wonderful about it 
is THE DESIRE of getting it. 

The desire to get earthly gold often has a 
wonderfully bad effect ; but the desire to get 
the heavenly gold has a wonderfully good 
effect. Let us see now what a bad effect the 
desu'e to get earthly gold often has on peo- 
ple. St. Paul calls this desire "the love of 
money ; " and he says it is " the root of all 
evil.^' (1 Tim. vi. 10.) The desire to get 
this gold has led men to cheat, and to lie, 
and to steal, and to murder, and to commit 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 267 



all kinds of wickedness. Suppose we visit 
the penitentiary. We shall find it filled with 
prisoners of different kinds. But if we should 
go into the cells and talk with the prisoners, 
we should find that nearly all of them had 
been put in prison for some wrong thing 
which the desire of getting this gold had led 
them to do. 

Some time ago, you remember, there was 
a horrible murder committed just outside 
this city. A poor, wretched German, whose 
name was Probst, enticed a whole family into 
the barn, and murdered them, one by one, 
even down to the innocent little babe in the 
cradle. He was not angry with them. He 
had no quarrel with them. The only thing 
that led him on to do that dreadful deed 
was the desire for gold, — "the love of 
money." And most of the horrible murders 
committed in the world are caused by this 
same desire. 

When the Spaniards discovered the coun- 
try of Mexico, in South America, they sent 
an army, under a general, whose name was 



268 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



Cortez, to conquer the country. The prin- 
cipal motive of those Spanish soldiers, in 
trying to conquer the country, was a desire 
to get gold. They exj)ected to find gold so 
plenty in the city of Mexico, that there 
would be more than they would want, or 
more than they could carry away. The 
Mexicans defended their city as long as they 
could, like brave men. When they found 
that it was impossible to defend it any 
longer, they took the great treasures of gold 
that were in their city, and threw them into 
the lake on which the city stood. They 
knew that gold was the chief thing the Span- 
iards desired, and they wanted to leave as 
little for them to get as possible. The Span- 
iards took the city, but were sorely disap- 
pointed to find so little gold there. They 
knew that the Mexicans had put it away 
somewhere. They tried to persuade them to 
tell where they had hid their treasures. 
But the Mexicans would not tell. Then the 
Spaniards tortured them in order to make 
them tell. The Emperor of Mexico then 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 269 



was a truly brave and noble man. The mis- 
erable Cortez became very angry with him, 
because he would not tell where the treasure 
was. So he ordered a huge gridiron to be 
made. He had this brave emperor fastened 
to it with a chain. Then he had a fire 
kindled under it, and roasted him alive, in 
the most crnel and lingering manner. How 
horrible to think of ! There you see the bad 
effect of the desire of earthly gold. 

One night, some years ago, a sailor stopped 
at a small inn, at a village in Normandy, and 
said he wanted supper, and a night's lodging. 
The landlord of the inn and his wife were old 
people, and they seemed to be very poor. 
When supper was ready the sailor asked the 
old people to sit up and take some with him. 
While they were eating he talked very freely 
to them, and asked them a good many ques- 
tions about themselves and their family, and 
especially about a son of theirs, wlio went to 
sea when he was a boy ; of whom they had 
heard nothing for many years, and whom 
they supposed to be dead. At the close of 



270 



BIBLE WONDEES. 



the evening the landlady took a candle and 
showed him to the room where he was to 
sleep. He bade her good-night, and as he 
shook hands with her he slipped a little purse 
of gold into her hand, and shook it very 
affectionately. She took the purse and 
showed it to her husband. It was more than 
they had ever had before at one time. " How 
much gold he must have ! " said the hus- 
band. "How well off we should be if we 
only had it ! " said the wife. So the desire 
to get gold took possession of their hearts, 
with all its bad results. They murdered the 
sailor, not knowing who he was, and took 
all the gold he had about him. 

Early in the morning two or three of their 
relations came in, and inquired about the 
sailor who had stopped there last night. The 
old people were greatly confused, but said 
that he had left early in the morning to go 
to the next village. "That is not possible," 
said they. " Why, it is your own son who 
has come home, well-off, to spend the rest of 
his days with you, and make you comfortable 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 271 



in your old age. He said he ¥/ould lodge 
one night with you as a stranger, to see how 
kind you v/ould be to an old sailor." You 
may think of the horror of those wretched 
old people when they found out that they had 
actually murdered their oivn son, from the 
cursed desire to get gold! They confessed 
their crime. The body was found, and the 
miserable murderers were put to death. Here 
we see what wonderfully bad results follow 
from the desire to get earthly gold. 

But very different results follow from the 
desire to get the heavenly gold, of which we 
are speaking. Wonderful good results from 
this, as wonderful evil results from the other. 
\ The love of earthly gold is the root of all 
evil. The love of heavenly gold is the root 
of all good. When any one desires to get 
this gold, let me show you how that desire 
does him good. He soon finds that only 
Jesus can give this gold. He begins to read 
the Bible in order to learn what kind of per- 
sons Jesus expects those to be to whom he 
gives this gold. And what does the Bible 



272 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



say such persons should be ? It tells him at 
once to break off from ever;yi:hmg that is 
wrong, and begin to do ever3i:hing that is 
right. K he has been proud, it tells him that 
he must give up his pride, and learn to be 
humble. K he has been cross and ugly in 
his temper, it tells him that he must overcome 
his bad temper, and learn to be kind, and gen- 
tle, and loving, like Jesus. If he has been 
in the habit of swearing, or lying, or stealing, 
it tells him that he must give up this habit 
at once. He must swear, and lie, and steal 
no more. Nay, the Bible goes fiu*ther than 
this. It not only makes him better outside, 
hut inside too . It tells him that if he even 
allow himself to think, or feel in his hearty 
anything that is wrong, he cannot get this 
heavenly gold. The desire to get this gold 
acts like a charm. It corrects ever}i:hing 
that is wrong, and leads to everything that is 
right. It makes the heart new, and the 
thoughts new, and the feelings new, and 
the tempers new ; and everji:hing about it 
makes holy and good. The second thing about 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 273 



this heayenly gold that is wonderful is the 
desire of getting it 

The third thing about this gold that is won- 
derfid is the result of getting it. 

The result of getting earthly gold is won- 
derfully bad ; but the result of getting the 
heavenly gold is wonderfully good. 

When St. Paul would show us the bad 
result that often follows to people from 
getting earthly gold, he says, it ''''drowns men 
in destruction and perdition." (1 Tim. vi. 9.) 

Here is an incident to show how truly a 
man was drowned in destruction by getting 
gold. 

Some years ago, a large English East India 
merchant ship, named "The Kent," caught 
fire, in the middle of the ocean. The fire 
was in the hold of the ship. The crew tried 
to put it out ; but it was impossible. Then 
they fastened the hatches and the cabin doors 
tight, to keep the air from getting at the fire. 
There was a large number of passengers on 
the ship, and unless some vessel should come 
in sight, before the flames burst through the 

18 



274 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



deck, they would all be lost. After waiting 
anxiously several days a vessel came in sight. 
It was a small brig. The captain nobly 
offered to stand by the burning ship, and take 
off all the passengers and crew. He could 
not come very near, because "The Kent" 
had guns on her lower deck. These wexe 
loaded, and as the fire reached them they 
would go off. So the brig lay off, at a dis- 
tance, out of reach of the guns. A boom, or 
spar, was rigged out from the stern of "The 
Kent " with a rope down from the end of it. 
The men had to go out to the end of this 
boom, and then slide down the rope into the 
boat, that was waiting to receive them. But 
the sea was very rough, and sometimes when 
a man got down to the end of the rope, he 
would find the boat not directly under him, 
but some distance off, and he would have to 
strike out and swim towards it. Nobody was 
allowed to take any baggage, or anji:hing but 
the clothes he had on. 

One of the sailors, who was waiting for his 
turn to go, found a lot of gold on the deck. 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 275 



A passenger, who could not take it with him, 
had thrown it out on the deck, like so much 
rubbish. The sailor thought he had better 
take the gold with him. So he got a piece of 
canvas, and sewed the gold up in it, and 
fastened it round his waist. By and by his 
turn came to get into the boat. He crawled 
out to the end of the boom. He slipped 
down the rope ; but just as he reached the 
water a big wave had carried the boat out of 
his reach. He was an excellent swimmer, so 
he let go the rope, and struck out for the 
boat. But the weight of the gold was too 
much for him. He sank like lead in the deep 
waters. He got the gold — but it drowned 
him in destruction. 

Some years ago there was a person, in a 
village in England, who was a collector for a 
Bible Society. He had a list of the names 
of a number of persons in the village who 
were subscribers to the Bible cause, and once 
a year he used to go round and collect their 
subscriptions. Among these names was that 
of a poor widow woman, who supported her- 



276 



BIBLE AVONDERS. 



self by washing c She was about the poorest 
person whose name he had on his list, and 
yet she was one of the most liberal. For a 
long time she had been in the habit of giving 
a guinea a year to the Bible Society. But 
one year a rich relation of this poor washer- 
woman died, and left a large fortune to her. 
She still lived in the same village ; but her 
humble little cottage had been exchanged for 
one of the largest and finest houses in the 
village. After a while the time came for the 
Bible collector to go round and gather up his 
subscriptions. He knew about the change 
which had taken place in the circumstances 
of her whom he had long known as the poor 
washerwoman. And as he went to call on 
her at her new house he said to himself, 
" I shall get a fine large subscription from 
this good woman. For if, when she was a 
poor washerwoman, and had to work hard 
for her living, she could give aguhiea a year, 
how much more will she be sure to give now, 
when she lives in so large a house, and is so 
well off ? " So he rang the bell ; and was 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 277 



ushered into the handsome parlor, where he 
met his old friend and subscriber. He said 
he was glad to hear of the pleasant change 
which had taken place in her circumstances, 
and then stated that he came once more for 
her subscription to that best of all books, — 
the Bible. She opened her purse and handed 
him a sJiUlingl He looked at it with as- 
tonishment. Then he said, "My good 
friend, what does this mean? I can't un- 
derstand it. When you were a poor woman 
and lived on your own labor, you always gave 
a guinea a year to the Bible Society ; and now, 
when you are so well off, can it be possible 
that you intend to give only a shilling ? " 

"Yes," she said, "that's all I am willing 
to give now. I feel very differently about 
these things from what I used to do. When 
I was really a poor woman I gladly gave away 
whatever money I could spare, for I never 
felt afraid of being poorer than I then was. 
But now the fear of being poor haunts me 
like a ghost, and makes me, all the time, un- 
willing to spend any money, or give it away. 



278 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



The truth is," she continued, "when I only 
had the shilling means, I had the guinea 
heart ; hut now ^ lohen I have the guinea means ^ 
I find that I only have the shilling heart. " 

Here we see the evil that resulted to this 
person from getting gold. It froze all her 
kind feelings, and shrunk up her large and 
liberal heart into a tiny little selfish one. She 
was a rich woman when she was very poor, 
but a poor woman when she became very 
rich. 

But the heavenly gold is very different 
from this. It is wonderful gold, because of 
the good it always does to those who get it. 
See what good it did to St. Paul to get this 
gold ! Before getting it he was a proud 
Pharisee. He thought himself one of the 
best men living, when he was really one of 
the worst. He was very selfish and very 
cruel. He went about persecuting good, 
innocent Christians only because they would 
not think in the same way that he did. He 
cast them into prison, and had them put to 
death; and he was willing to spend his 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 279 



whole time in this bloody work. But then 
he was a poor man. He had none of this 
wonderful gold. As soon as he got this, 
how rich it made him ! How different 
from what he was before ! It was like 
changing a lion into a lamb. He became 
humble, and loving, and gentle as a little 
child. He went up and down everywhere, 
not persecuting any longer, but preaching 
about the love of Jesus, and the wonderful 
blessings that he brings. He gave up his 
whole life to this good work. No dangers, 
or trials, or difficulties could stop hkn. He 
went over mountains, and deserts, and seas, 
trying to save the souls of men, and get them 
to go to heaven with him. I suppose no 
mere man ever lived who did so much good 
as the apostle Paul ; and all this resulted 
from his getting this wonderful gold, — the 
grace of God. 

And this gold has been doing good in just 
the same way ever since ; and is doing so 
still. Let me mention one case. It occurred 
in a Sunday school in this city not long since. 



280 



BIBLE WOJSDERS. 



There was a scholar in this school to which I 
refer, who was the worst boy in the school. 
His name was Bob ; but to show what sort of 
a character he had gained for himself, he was 
generally spoken of as " Bad Boh.'' He was 
rough and rude. He told lies, and swore, 
and, if he got a chance, he was ready enough 
even to steal. He was restless, unruly, and 
disobedient. He was always getting into 
mischief. He made so much trouble that 
none of the teachers in the school seemed 
able to manage him. He had been put out 
of one class after another, till he had been, in 
turn, in every class in the school. He was 
the black sheep of the flock, and the super- 
intendent thought he would be obliged to turn 
him out of the school. And he was as bad 
at home as he was in school. His mother 
was a poor widow, and he was a constant 
plague and torment to her. But bad as Bob 
was the superintendent was unwilling to turn 
him out of the school. He felt sme that the 
only hope for him was in the school. He 
knew he would go to ruin if he were dismissed 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 



281 



from the school. So he persuaded a young 
lady who had just taken charge of a class of 
boys to take him into her class. She felt very 
unwilling to do so ; but, rather than have him 
turned away, she concluded to try what she 
could do. She began by saying, "Bob, you 
are a new scholar in this class, and I am a 
new teacher. I don't know how I can get 
along, but I want you to help me." Then she 
gave him the charge of the books belonging to 
the class. Bob was pleased to think of having 
something to do, and of being a help to the 
teacher. He soon became interested in the 
class. He grew fond of his teacher. She 
gained his confidence, and had no trouble in 
managing him. He got to be a quiet, attentive 
scholar. He studied his lessons carefully. He 
began to pray. He soon became a Christian. 
He got some of this wonderful gold. It 
changed his whole character. He was no 
longer spoken of as " Bad Bob," but as " Good 
Bob." From being the worst boy in the school 
he became the best. He was an example to all 
the other scholars. And the change at home 



282 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



was as great as the change at school. He 
became a real comfort to his mother, and 
made her home very happy. It was getting 
this heavenly gold that did all this good. 
And the good which it did for " Bad Bob " it 
can do for anybody else. It is doing this 
good all the time. And if this is the way in 
which it works we may well apply the words 
of onr text to it, and say, " The gold of that 
land is good." It is wonderful gold. Three 
things about it are wonderful. The vmy of 
getting it is wonderful. The desire of getting 
it is wonderful. The result of getting it is 
wonderful. 

My dear friends, I want you all to get this 
gold. If I could tell you of a mine, where 
you could get earthly gold by asking for it, 
would you not go and get some ? Yes. Well, 
this gold is worth a hundred times more than 
that. And you can get it by asking for it. 
Jesus says, and ye shall receive,^^ 

One day a minister was stopping at an inn, 
in Germany. He asked the maid-servant 
who waited on him if she ever prayed. She 



THE WONDERFUL GOLD. 283 



said she had scarcely time to eat, and how, 
then, could she find time to pray? He said 
he would teach her a short prayer, with just 
three words in it, and if she would promise to 
use it every morning and night, when she 
was getting up and going to bed, on his re- 
turn he would give her a sum of money. She 
thought that would be an easy way to get 
some money. So she promised to use the 
prayer. He then gave her these three words 
to repeat : " Lord^ save me." 

For two or three weeks she went on saying 
the words without thinking about them ; but 
one night, after she had said them, the thought 
came into her mind, "I wonder what these 
words mean? I wonder why that minister 
wanted me to say them ? " She began to read 
the Bible to see if she could find out. 

About three months after, the minister 
stopped at that inn again. A strange girl 
waited on him. He asked the landlord where 
the girl was who waited on him before. " O 
sir, she got to be too good to stay at an inn ; 
and now she is living with the minister." He 



284 



BIBLE WONDEKS. 



called at the minister's house. As soon as 
the girl saw him, she said, " Oh, I'm so glad 
to see you ! I shall always thank God that 
ever you met me, and taught me that little 
prayer. I don't want the money. I have 
found Jesus through that prayer, and this 
is reward enough." That girl got this won- 
derful gold by asldng for it, and so may you. 
It made her happy. It saved her soul, and 
it w^ill do the same for you, if you seek it 
as earnestly as she sought it. Do this, 
and you will find how true the hymn is when 
it says : — 

" Oh, happy is the man who hears 
Religion's warning voice, 
And who celestial wisdom makes 
His early, only choice. 

" For she has treasures greater far 

Than East or West unfold; 
More precious are her bright rewards 
Than gems and stores of gold. 



X. 



John xvi. 23. 



X. 



Ml^ats0e&jer sl^all ask ll^c ^ut^tx in name, foiU 

This was one of the last promises Jesus 
made to his disciples just before his death. 
He wanted to say something to comfort them 
when he should be taken away, and so he 
gave them this sweet promise. He certainly 
could not have spoken any words better 
suited to give them comfort when they were 
sad and sorrowful. This is really a wonder- 
ful promise. We may well count it in among 
the wonders of the Bible. 

You know that one of the great dangers 
about a steam engine is the bursting of the 
boiler ; and one of the things which causes the 
boiler to burst is having too little water in it. 
The duty of the engineer is to watch the boiler 
closely, and see that it is well supplied with 
water. But in case he should neglect to do 

287 



288 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



this, there is generally a bell attached to the 
engine, which is fixed in such a way, that, 
when the water begins to get too low, it will 
ring, and tell the engineer that more water 
is wanted in the boiler. That is a very nice 
arrangement. And it seems to me that when 
J esns gave us this sweet promise he was just 
putting a bell in our hands, and saying, 
"When you want me to help you, or do any- 
thing for you, just ring this bell, and when 
I hear it, I will come and help you." Yes, 
when we are praying to God, we are, as it 
were, ringing a bell to let him know that we 
want something. The engine bell rings to 
remind the engineer of something that he has 
forgotten, or neglected. But God never for- 
gets, and never neglects anything. Jesus 
said, "Your heavenly Father knoweth what 
things ye have need of before ye ask." 
Then some people may say, "What's the 
use of telling God what we want, if he 
knows it already?" The use is that God 
commands us to do it. That's enough for 
us to know. 



THE WONDEKFUL PKOMISE. 289 

Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my 
name, he will give it you." 

Now, before we go any further, in talking 
about this wonderful promise, I wish to show 
you that there are some limits to it. Some 
what? Limits. A limit to a promise is like 
a fence to a farm. Suppose you and I buy a 
farm of a hundred acres, about ten miles 
from town. We go out to see it. The per- 
son we are buying it from goes with us. As 
we are walking over it, we say to him, How 
far does the farm reach in this direction ? " 
His answer is, "To yonder fence near the 
woods." That fence is the limit of the farm, 
or the end of it in that direction. And if we 
look at this wonderful promise we shall find 
that there are some limits, or fences, to it. 
Let us see if we can find out what they are. 

The promise says, " Whatsoever ye shall ask 
the Father, he will give it you." There must 
be some limit here. Suppose I should get a 
large empty box, six feet square ; that I 
should set it down here by the pulpit, and 
then kneel down and pray that God would 

19 



290 



BIBLE WONDERS, 



open the windows of heaven and ponr down 
gold dollars enough to fill that box. Do you 
think he would do it? No. Why? Because 
he doesn't want me to have that much 
gold. 

Or suppose I should pray God to make 
wings grow out. of my shoulders so that I 
could fly up into the air, like an eagle. Would 
he do it? No. A'\Tiy? Because he doesn't 
want me to have wings. Then one limit to 
this wonderful promise is that we must ask 
for what God thinlcs best. 

But suppose I ask God to give me grace to 
love and serve him. I am sure that that is 
one of the best things I can ask for. And I 
am sure that God thinks so too. But sup- 
pose I ask God to give me this grace in the 
name^ and for the sake^ of the angel Gabriel. 
Will he give it to me ? No. In whose name 
must I ask for it ? In the name of Jesus. Yes. 
Jesus says, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in 
my name,^'^ This is the second limit : in the 
name of Jesus. 

And then there is one more limit to this 



THE WONDERFUL PROMISE. 291 

promise. Suppose your little brother is lying 
very ill with the scarlet fever. The doctor 
thinks it very doubtful whether he will live. 
You are very much distressed about him. 
It will be so sad to have him die, and be 
buried up in the cold grave. It almost breaks 
your heart to think of it. Well, you go up 
to your room, and kneel down beside your 
bed, and you pray earnestly that God would 
spare your little brother's life, and make him 
well again. As soon as you stop praying 
you say to yourself, "I don't think God is 
able to do this. What's the use of my pray- 
ing to him ? " Would God be likely to hear 
that prayer? No. For Jesus says, in 
another place, " Whatsoever ye shall ask in 
ipYSijeY^ believing J ye shall receive." Faith in 
God's power to do what we ask for, is another 
limit to this promise. These are the three 
things that limit this promise, or fence it 
round. We must ask lohat God thinks best; 
in the name of Jesus ; in faith. 

And now we are ready to go on with this 
wonderful promise. 



292 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



" Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my 
name, he will give it you." 

Solomon says, "There is a time for every- 
thing." There are particular times when we 
shall find this promise wonderful. I wish to 
speak of three of these times. 

In the first place ^ it is a wonderful jpromise 

for TIIMES or POVERTY. 

A great many of God's children are poor in 
this world. Jesus came to "preach the gos- 
pel to the poorJ^ The Bible tells us that 
" God has chosen the poor of this world, but 
who are rich in faith, to be heirs of his king- 
dom." Some of God's children are poor all 
their lives ; while others are poor for awhile, 
and then get to be better off. It is not because 
God can't help it, that any Christians are poor. 
He has plenty of money to make them all 
rich, and he would give it to them, in a 
minute, if he saw it would be best for them. 
It is no sin, and no disgrace, to be poor. 
Jesus came to our earth as a poor man, 
although he owned all money in the world. 
One reason why he did this was to teach us 



THE WONDERFUL PROMISE. 293 



that we needn't be ashamed of bemg poor. 
But though it is no disgrace to be poor, it is 
often very inconvenient, and leads to a great 
deal of suffering ; and God has given us this 
wonderful promise to be a comfort to us in 
times of poverty. Oh, how many times when 
God's people have been suffering from pover- 
ty they have thought of this promise, "What- 
soever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he 
will give it you . " And when they have a$ked , 
they have received what they needed. Let 
me give you one or two illustrations. 

" Mother, can't I have some new boots ? 
said little Willie to his mother, one day. 
"My toes are all out of these. The snow 
gets in, and I am so cold." 

"Yes, my child, you can," said his mother, 
" if you will ask God to send them to you ; 
for I have no money to get them with, and 
your father spends all his wages at the 
tavern." 

"Why didn't I think of that before?" 
said Willie. "You knovf we were reading 
this morning the promise of Jesus, ^ Whatso- 



294 



BIBLE WOKDEKS. 



ever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he 
will give it you.' I'll go now and ask him." 
He went out of the parlor into his mother's 
room. She followed him softly and stood 
by the door in the entry. She saw him 
kneel down, and^ covering his face with his 
hands, he offered this simple prayer : — 

"O God, father drinks, mother has no 
money, my feet g^et cold, and I want a pair 
of boots. Please send me a pair, for Jesus' 
sake. Amen." 

This was all. He repeated this childlike 
prayer two or three times. He believed that 
God would hear him. He exjptcttd an an- 
swer. When he came domastairs he said : — 

" Mother, I'm sure God will send them as 
soon as he gets ready." 

A day or two after, a lady, who was very 
fond of Willie, called to take him out to 
walk. At first he hesitated about going; 
but he soon made up his mind to go, and 
they started. Pretty soon the lady noticed 
his stockings peeping out at the toes of his 
boots, and she said : — 



THE WONDEEFUL PROMISE. 295 

"Why, Willie, look at your feet ! They 
will freeze. Why didn't you put on a better 
pair of boots ? " 

" These are all I have, ma'am." 

" All you have ! Why don't you have a 
better pair ? " 

"I'm going to, just as soon as God sends 
them," he said, with confidence. 

The lady's eyes filled with tears, and, lead- 
ing him into a shoe store, she said, with 
quivering lip, "There, child, pick out any 
pair you please." Willie was soon fitted 
with a nice pair of good, strong boots, and 
then felt very happy as he finished his walk 
with the kind lady. When he came home, 
he said : — 

"Look, mother ! God has sent my boots. 
Mrs. Gray's money bought them, but God 
heard me ask for them, and I guess he told 
Mrs. Gray to buy them for me." 

Then he kneeled down by his mother's 
side, and said, "Blessed Jesus, I thank thee 
very much for my new boots . Please make me 
a good boy, and take care of mother. Amen." 



296 



BIBLE WONDEKS. 



Certainly Willie found out that this is a 
wonderful promise for times of poverty. 

Here is another story to illustrate this 
same point of our subject. 

Some years ago, in a village near Warsaw, 
in Poland, there lived a pious peasant, whose 
name was Dobry. Without any fault of his 
he had got behindhand with his rent. His 
landlord was very hard-hearted, and, al- 
though it was winter, had threatened to turn 
him out unless the rent was paid. Dobry 
went to see him three times to tell how sick 
his wife had been, which had prevented him 
from paying the rent, and that he would pay 
as soon as possible, if he would only wait a 
little. But he wouldn't listen to him. He 
said he would come the next morning and 
turn him out. 

When he went home that evening, feeling 
very sad, Dobry gathered his family around 
^ him for prayer. He told God about their 
trouble, and asked him to send them help in 
some way. After prayer they sang a hymn, 
beginning with the words : — 



THE WONDERFUL PROMISE. 297 

Commit thou all thy griefs 
And ways into his hands/' etc. 

These are the closing lines of the last 
verse of the hymn : — 

" When Thou would'st all our need supply 
Who, who shall stay thy hand ? " 

While they were singing this last verse, 
a gentle tapping was heard at the window. 
An old friend was there. It was a raven 
that Dobry's grandfather had taken out of 
the nest, and tamed, and then set at liberty. 
He often came to the cottage, and, when the 
door was shut, always lighted on the win- 
dow-sill, and tapped at the window till they 
let him in. Dobry opened the window. 
The raven hopped in, holding in his bill a 
gold ring, set round with precious stones, 
which he laid down before Dobry. Here 
was an answer to their prayer that filled the 
hearts of all the family with gladness. 

At first, Dobry thought that he would sell 
the ring, and pay his rent with the price of 
it ; but afterwards he concluded to take it to 



298 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



his minister, tell him all about it, and ask 
him what he had better do. He did so. As 
soon as the minister saw the ring he knew 
that it belonged to Stanislaus, the King of 
Poland. He took it to him, and told him 
the story of the poor peasant. The king was 
so pleased with this, that he sent for Dobry 
and rewarded him, so that he had plenty to 
pay his rent, and get food for his family 
through the winter. And when spring came 
the king had a new house built for Dobry, 
and gave him cattle from his own stall ; and 
over the door of the house there was a cast- 
iron tablet, on which was the figure of a 
raven with a ring in his beak, and under- 
neath a verse from the hymn they were sing- 
ing when the raven came as God's messenger 
to bring them relief. And we may be sure 
that after that, whenever Dobry read the 
words of our text, he would feel that it was a 
wonderful promise for times of poverty. 
But^ secondly^ this is a wonderful promise 

for TIMES OF DANGER. 

We often find ourselves placed in situa- 



THE WONDERFUL PROMISE. 299 

tions of so much danger that, unless God 
takes care of us, we must lose our lives. 

Some time ago, a ship in the middle of the 
ocean was overtaken by a sudden storm. 
It came on unexpectedly, before they had 
time to take in their sails. Then there was 
great confusion on deck. The captain was 
shouting out different orders, and the sailors 
were hurrying here and there, to get in the 
sails before the wind could tear them to 
pieces. In the midst of all this noise and 
hurry, a rope became tangled, or, as the 
sailors say, "got foul," up above the main 
royal-yard. This is the highest yard, or 
cross-beam, on the tallest mast of the ship. 
It was necessary for some one to go up and 
attend to it, or the mast might be broken, or 
the sail lost. There was a sailor boy on 
board, named Jim. He had been brought up 
in Sunday school, and was a good. Christian 
lad. The captain saw him, and cried out, 
" Jim, run up to the main-royal and overhaul 
that line." 

"Ay, ay, sir," said Jim. It was a very 



300 



BIBLE WOKDERS. 



dangerous thing in such a storm, with the 
ship tossing as she was, to climb up to such 
a dizzy height. At the foot of the rigging 
Jim paused for a moment and looked down 
at the deck. Then he sprung into the rig- 
ging, mounted aloft as though he had been 
a squirrel; reached the royal-yard, over- 
hauled the rope, and came down again to the 
deck in safety. A gentleman, who was a 
passenger on board the ship, was standing 
by the captain when he gave this order. He 
saw Jim as he paused a moment before 
going aloft, and then watched him anxiously 
as he executed that dangerous order. And 
when the sails were all furled, and every- 
thing was snug and quiet, he walked up to 
where Jim was standing, and said to him : — 

"Jim, when the captain gave you the order 
to go up and overhaul that line, a little while 
ago, I noticed that you paused a moment 
at the foot of the rigging, before going up. 
What did you do that for ? " 

" I knew it was a dangerous thing to do, sir, 
and I just asked God to keep me from harm." 



THE WONDERFUL PROMISE. 301 

That sailor boy was feeling the precious- 
ness of this wonderful promise in that time of 
danger. 

A Moravian missionary to Greenland gives 
lis the following incident, which shows how 
wonderfully God fulfils this precious promise 
to his people in times of danger. 

In the year 1849 a couple of young married 
Greenlanders, who were servants of Jesus, 
came to the mission station at Okak to get 
some provisions. On their way they were met 
by a large white Polar bear, which is one of 
the most fierce and dangerous of all animals. 
They were, of course, very much alarmed, 
for the man had no gun, or other weapon, 
with him to defend his own life, or that 
of his wife. He turned to her, therefore, and 
said : — 

" We can do nothing to defend ourselves 
from this danger but pray to God." 

So they knelt down together on the snow, 
and asked God to protect them if it was his 
will ; or else take them to heaven if he had 
sent the bear to kill them. While they were 



302 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



thus engaged the bear came up to them, but 
to their wonder and joy he quietly passed by 
them and went away. 

On their return from Okak, when they had 
nearly reached the same place, they were 
alarmed at seeing the same fierce creature 
coming up to them again. But, as they had 
proved the power of prayer before, they 
kneeled down again and looked up to God for 
help. The bear came close up to them, and 
smelt all round them, but never offered to hurt 
them, and went away. That God who deliv- 
ered Daniel out of the paw of the lion, and 
out of the paw of the bear, had heard their 
cry, and delivered them. They asked for 
protection in the name of Jesus, when they 
were in danger, and according to his wonder- 
ful promise God gave it to them. 

Here is one more illustration of this point. 
It was told by a missionary among the Ojibwa 
Indians. 

There were two brothers, among the 
Ojibwas, who were conjurers. One of them 
became a Christian, and gave up the practice 



THE WONDERFUL PROMISE. 303 



of cheating the people by conjuring. This 
made the other brother very angry. He de- 
clared that he would tomahawk the missionary 
the first time he saw him. Now, a threat, 
like this, from an Indian savage, is a very 
serious thing. 

Soon after this the conjurer, with his toma- 
hawk in his hand, came one day into a meet- 
ing where the missionary was preaching. 
The missionary saw him come in, and knew 
what he had come for. He lifted up his 
heart in a silent prayer to God for protection. 
One of the Christian Indians went up to the 
missionary, in the midst of his sermon, and 
begged him to stop, for this man had come 
into the meeting to kill him ; but he went on. 
Presently the conjurer started from his seat, 
for the purpose of carrying out his murderous 
threatening. The missionary told him to 
stop till he had finished his sermon, and then 
he would be ready for him. The Indian sat 
down, and the missionary went on. But, be- 
fore the sermon was over, the tomahawk was 
laid aside ; tears were seen streaming down 



304 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



the Indian's cheeks, and at last he fell down 
on his knees, and cried out, " What must I do 
to be saved?" Shortly after he became a 
Christian, and now he is preaching that gos- 
pel which he so much hated, and wanted to 
destroy. 

And so that good missionary found this 
wonderful promise fulfilled to him in his 
time of danger. 

In the third place ^ this is a loonderful promise 

for TmES OF TROUBLE. 

We can none of us get through this world 
without trouble. The Bible says, "Man is 
horn unto trouble^ as the sparks fly upwards." 
And it is a great blessing to know of some- 
thing that will be sure to help and comfort 
us when troubles come upon us. I know of 
nothing that will do this better than this won- 
derful promise, if we only make a right use 
of it. 

Let me give you one or two illustrations 
of this point. 

Some years ago there was a great preacher 
in Germany, whose name was Paul Gerhard. 



THE WONDERFUL PROMISE. 305 

He was an earnest Christian man, and loved 
to preach about Jesus; to show the people 
what a great Saviour he is, and that, unless 
they repented and believed in him, and lived 
according to his laws, they could not be 
saved. But the ruler of that part of the 
country — he was called the Elector of Bran- 
denburgh — didn't like that kind of preachings 
and he sent word to this minister that he 
must either quit preaching in that way, or go 
away out of the country. Paul Gerhard sent 
back this message : " that it would be very 
hard for him to leave his country and friends, 
and go with his family among strangers, 
where they would have nothing to live on ; 
but as for preaching anything else than what 
the Bible taught him, he would rather die 
than do that." So he had to go into banish- 
ment, with his wife and little children. 

At the end of their first day's journey they 
came into a wood, and rested for the night 
at a little inn they found there. The little 
children were crying for hunger, and cling- 
ing to their mother, but she had no food to 

20 



306 



BIBLE WOXDEES. 



give them, and no money to buy any with. 
She had tried to l^eep up all day, but now she 
began to cry too. This made Paul Gerhard 
have a very heavy heart. He left his family, 
and went alone, into the dark wood, to pray. 
It was a time of great trouble to him, and 
there was no one to whom he could go for 
help but to God. 

While he was alone in the wood, praying, 
this text of Scripture came into his mind. It 
seemed to him as if an angel had come and 
whispered it to him : Commit thy ivay 
unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he 
shall 'bring it to j)o.ss (Ps. xxxvii. 5.) This 
gave him gTcat comfort. "Yes,'*' he said to 
himself, "though I am banished from my 
home and friends, and don't know where to 
take my wife and children for a shelter, yet 
God, my God, sees me in this dark wood. He 
knows all about us. Xow is the time to trust 
in him. He will show me through ; he will 
bring it to pass." He was so happy in think- 
ing on this text, and so thanldul to God for 
bringing it into his mind, that he walked up 



THE WONDEEFUL PROMISE. 307 



and down, under the trees, and made some 
verses on it, which were afterwards written 
down and printed. Each verse begins with 
two or three words of the text, so that when 
you have read through the hymn you get the 
whole text. Perhaps you would like to read 
the verses before we finish the story. Here 
they are : — 

" ' Commit thy way,^ 0 weeper, 
The cares that fret thy soul, 
To thine Almighty Keeper, 

Who makes the worlds to roll. 

" ' Unto the liordy who quieteth 
The wind, and cloud, and sea; 
Oh, doubt not he provideth 
A footpath too for thee. 

< Trust alsOf^ for 'tis useless 

To murmur and forebode; 
The Almighty arm is doubtless 

Tull strong to bear thy load. 

" * In Him,' hide all thy sorrow, 
And bid thy fears good-night; 
He'll make a glorious morrow 
To crown thy head with light. 



308 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



' And he shall bring it ' near thee, 

The good thou long hast sought; 
Though now it seems to fly thee, 

Thou shalt ere long be brought 

* To pass ' from grief to gladness, 

From night to clearest day ; 
When doubts, and fears, and sadness 

Shall all have passed away." 

When he had finished making these verses 
he went into the house. He told his wife 
about the sweet text that had come into his 
mind, and repeated to her the verses he had 
made upon it. She soon dried up her tears, 
and began to be as cheerful and trustful as 
her husband was. The children were in bed 
and asleep. The husband and wife knelt 
down together and prayed, and resolved to 
commit their way unto the Lord," and leave 
it for him to " bring it to pass " as he saw fit. 
Then after writing down his sweet verses 
they went to bed. 

Before they had fallen asleep a great noise 
was heard at the door of the inn. It seemed 
as though some important person was knock- 



THE WOJ^DERFUL PROMISE. 309 

ing there. When the landlord opened the 
door, a man on horseback was standing before 
it. He said, in a lond voice, "I am a mes- 
senger. I come from Duke Christian, of 
Meresburg, and I am trying to find a minister 
named Paul Gerhard, who has just been ban- 
ished from Brandenburgh. Do you know 
whether he has passed this woy?" 

" Paul Gerhard ? " said the landlord ; " why, 
yes, he is in this house ; but he has just gone 
to bed. I can't disturb him now.'' 

" But you must," said the messenger. " I 
have a very important letter for him from the 
duke ; let me see him at on^e." 

So the landlord went upstairs and told 
Mr. Gerhard, who came down to see what 
all this could be about. 

The messenger handed him a large, sealed 
letter ; and, to his great joy, he read in it 
that the good Duke Christian had heard of 
the intended punishment of himself and 
family, and had written to hnn, spying, 
"Come into my country, Paul Gerhard, ai.d 
you shall have a church, and people, and 



310 



BIBLE WOI^DEES. 



house, and home, and plenty to live on, and 
liberty to preach the gospel just as much as 
you please." 

Then the good minister went up and told 
his wife, and they praised God for his love ; 
and the next morning they started off with 
glad hearts and cheerful feet to their new 
home. And when he got there, how I should 
like to have heard Paul Gerhard preach a 
sermon on this wonderful promise : " What- 
soever ye shall ask the Father in my name, 
he will give it you " ! 

There is one more illustration I want to 
give on this part of our subject. It is about 
trouble of a different kind from what Paul 
Gerhard had. But it shows that this won- 
derful promise will help us in any kind of 
trouble. 

There was a good Christian woman, a 
few years ago, who lived in the upper part 
of the State of New York. She was an 
elderly woman, but very active in doing 
good, especially in the Sunday-school 
cause. Her name was Mrs. H , but 



THE WONDERFUL PROmSE. 311 

those who knew her well used to speak of 
her pleasantly, as Aunt Polly. She often 
met with difficulties in the good work she 
was trying to do ; but whenever these times 
of trouble came she fell back on this wonder- 
ful promise. She told God all about it, and 
kept on praying, till, in some way or other, 
she was helped out of the trouble. 

One time she moved into a neighborhood 
where nearly all the people were infidels. 
Of course, there was no church, and no 
Sunday school. Most of the people spent 
their time, on the Sabbath, either in work- 
ing, or at the tavern, or in playing ball, and 
pitching pennies. Aunt Polly thought this 
would never do in the world, in the place 
where she lived. So she made up her mind 
to start a Sunday school. The great diffi- 
culty was to find a place to hold it in. There 
was the village school-house, — that would 
do nicely, if she could only get the use of it ; 
but the trustees were all infidels, and she 
knew they would not let her have it. But 
she resolved to try. She called on the Pres- 



312 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



ident of the Board of Trustees and asked for 
the use of the school-house on Sundays, for 
the purpose of starting a Sunday school. 
He said to her in a very positive way : — 
" You can't have it." 

Here was a trouble for Aunt Polly; but 
she was not discouraged. She resolved 
to pray over it for a while, and then try 
again. 

After a few days she called again on the 
president, and asked for the school-house to 
start a Sunday school in. 

"No, Aunt Polly," said he; "I tell you, 
once for all, you can't have the school-house 
for any such purpose." 

"I think I'm going to get it," said Aunt 
Polly. 

"I should like to know how, if I don't 
give you the key ? " 

"I think the Lord is going to unlock 
it." 

"Maybe he will," said the infidel, "but I 
can tell you this : he'll never get the key 
from me." 



THE WONDERFUL PROMISE. 313 



''Well, Pm going to pray over it," said 
Aunt Polly; "IVe found out from experi- 
ence " — mark Aunt Polly's experience — 
"that 'when I heep on praying something 
always gives way,^^ 

She went away. She waited a few days 
longer, and kept on praying. She called 
again on the trustee and asked for the 
school-house. "What sort of a thing is 
this Sunday school, anyhow?" asked the 
man. 

Aunt Polly told him what it was. 

" How much do you charge ? " 

" I charge a great deal ; but you don't have 
to pay. The pay comes from my Master, 
Jesus. And he's going to unlock the school- 
house for us." 

"Well, Aunt Polly," said he, "you've 
got the best pluck of any woman I ever 
saw." 

The result was, that the key was given; 
the door was opened ; the Sunday school was 
started. And when the other trustees got 
angry and wanted to stop the work, this 



3U 



BIBLE WONDERS. 



man opposed and overruled them all and 
kept the school-house open. So you see 
that when Aunt Polly kept on praying, some- 
thing did give way. 

The next summer, besides a large number 
of children, there were thirty-six young men 
between the ages of seventeen and twenty- 
five in Aunt Polly's school, and fifteen of 
them have since become Christians. 

"AVhatsoever ye shall ask the Father in 
my name, he will give it you." This is a 
wonderful promise. We have spoken of 
three kinds of times for which it is wonder- 
ful. AVhat is the first? Times of poverty 
What is the second? Times of danger. 
What is the third? Times of trouble. 

My dear young friends, learn to use this 
promise. In poverty, in danger, in trouble 
— pray ; and keep on praying, and something 
will give way. 

" Prayer makes the darkened cloud withdraw; 
Prayer climbs the ladder J acob saw, 
Gives exercise to faith and love, 
Brings every blessing from above. 



THE WONDERFUL PROMISE. 315 

^ If pains afflict, or wrongs oppress, 
If cares distract, or fears dismay, 
If guilt deject, or sins distress. 
The reinedy^s before thee — pray." 



Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in 
my name, he will give it you.'' 



INDEX. 

PAGE 

Alfred the Great, his love for the Bible, ... 53 

Angel, an, the little girl made to be, 114-17 

Bad Bob, changed by the wonderful gold, .... 280-82 

Bible, the, how it was made, 12 

how long in making, 12 

how many men to make it, . . . . , 13, 14 

the different parts of, ..... , 16 

how persecuted by heathen, . , . , 17, 20 

Romanists, .... 20-24 

how preserved, 26-31 

preserved in a stool, 32-34 

baked in a loaf, 35, 36 

how it has been scattered, 41 

how loved, 52 

love for, examples of, 64-8 

how studied, . 59 

how long it can be preached from, ... 60 

books published on, 61, 62 

examples of studying, . . . . . . 63, 64 

a stolen, saving two robbers, 180-2 

Society, the British and Foreign, story about the 

ground on which their house is built, ... 44 

Books, how long some are in making, 12 

Bread, a useful thing, 165,6 

means suitable food, 166, 7 

the strengthening power of, 168, 9 

the wonderful, its strengthening power, . . . 171, 2 

its satisfying power, .... 173, 4 

its power to save, .... 179, 80 

how to eat it, .... . 191, 2 



Changes, many about us. 



317 



195,6 



318 INDEX. 

Change, the wonderful, what it is, 197 

of heart, can't be good without a, . , . , 198 

can't go to heaven without a, . . . 214 

can't be happy without a, . . , , 206 

the wonderful, its effects, 225 

its effects illustrated in the history 

of two boys, 238-41 

its effects illustrated by an old lo- 
comotive, 228-33 

its effects illustrated by an old hulk, 233-37 

Changes, without effects, 226 

with effects, 227 

Chinese Emperor and his pig, 200-4 

Crab apple-tree, the, and its story, 245-9 

Crete, the island of, and its labyrinth, 106-8 

Conscience, what it is, 137 

what it does, 138 

Curtius Manlius, the story of, 82-4 

Crowther Bishop, and his history, , 48, 9 

Deliverance, wonderful, Jesus brings, . . , , , 98 

Dober, Leonard, and his love for the heathen, . . . 80, 1 

Doing without it, a story about, 250 

Dobry and the raven, 296, 7 

Drunkard's Daughter, and her love for her father, , . 87-9 

Dow, Lorenzo, finding out a thief, ...... 139, 40 

Eden and its gold, 252 

Fitness for a feast, what is, 218 

Gerhard, Paul, and his hymn, 305-10 

Good for nothing things, what to do with, .... 127 

Gold, earthly, great danger in getting, ..... 260 

great price to get, 258,9 

the desire of getting evil, .... 266, 7 
the evil of the desire for, illustrated in the 

conquest of Mexico, 267,8 

parents murdering their own son to get, . 269, 70 

the effect of getting, evil, 273 

the bad effects of, seen in the story of the 

guinea means and the shilling heart, . . 275-7 



INDEX. 319 

Gold, heavenly, its meaning and character, .... 257 

and how to get it, 258, 9 

the good effects of, in St. Paul, . . , 278, 9 
without money and without price, a story 

about, 263-5 

Grace Darling and her story, 102-4 

Heart, the natural, not like a sheet of paper, but like a 

garden bed, 199 

Inquisition, the, and what it did, 21, 22 

Inspiration, and what it is, 15 

Jesus, his name, wonderful for its many meanings, . . 71-7 

love, 79 

the love of, shown by suffering, 86 

Kaleidoscope, a, the Bible like, 78 

Kent, the East Indiaman, a sailor drowned by getting gold 

from, 274 

King, the, and his silver bell, 174 

Lankton Chloe, her trials and support, 176-8 

Lambs, feed my, what it means, 170 

Life-boat, the, of Jesus, 1C5 

Light, wonderful the, that Jesus gives, . . . . . 113, 14 

all, how Jesus made death to a boy, .... 118-21 

Lion, a, helping to spread the gospel, 50, 1 

Madagascar, persecutions in, 24, 5 

Mosaic work, what it is, 16 

TsTail, a rusty, finding out a murder, 141-6 

Nebuchadnezzar, and his dream, ...... 131-33 

Polly, aunt, and her prayers, , , 310-14 

Prayer, the nature of, like the bell on an engine, ... 288 

Willie getting a pair of shoes by, ... . 293, 5 

saving the Greenlandcrs from the bear, . . . 301, 2 

a missionary from the tomahawk, . . 303, 4 

Promise, the wonderful, for times of danger, . . . 299, 3C0 

trouble, ... 104 

its limits, 289-91 



320 INDEX. 

Promise, the wonderful, for times of poverty, ... 292 

Providence, what it means and how it acts, .... 147, 8 

revealing sin by lightning, 149, 50 

a bird, 151-9 

Queen's, the reception, the dress required for, . . . 215-17 

Remedy, a wonderful, . . . . , . . . 122-26 

Revealer, a, what is, 134 

Eomish bishop, a, spreading the Bible, 46, 7 

Russian servant's, a, devotion to his master, . . . 90-4 

Secrets revealed, by God, 135 

conscience, 137 

Secret the, of being happy, . 207, 8 

unhappy, 206 

Sailor boy's the, prayer in danger, 299, 300 

Short prayer, the, and its results, 282-4 

Steam engine, the, and its bell, 287, 8 

Testimonies, God's, different names for, .... 10 

Testimony, what it is, 9, 10 

Testament, a Xew, saving a Brahmin, 183-6 

The thorn in the pillow, 210-13 

Theseus and his story, 109-11 

Unfitness for heaven, what it means, 214, 15 

Verse, spelling a, saving a soul, 187-90 

Voltaire and his printing-press, 45, 6 

Washington George, meaning of his name, .... 73 

Wonders of the Bible, Jesus the greatest, . . . . 69, 70 

outside the, of the Bible, 12 

Waldensian peddler, and the Bible, 42, 3 



C85 82 1| 



